Why is string.front dchar?

[Jakob Ovrum]

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 13:30:11 UTC, Tobias Pankrath wrote:
> (w|d)string.length returning anything else then the number of 
> underlying code points would be inconsistent to other array 
> types and m aking (d|w)string arrays of code points was a 
> (arguably good) design decision.

Code units, not code points.

Of course, a single UTF-32 code unit is also a single code point.

> That said: nothing prevents you from writing another string 
> type that abstracts from the actual string encoding.

Such types tend to have absolutely awful performance. It is a 
minefield of disastrous algorithmic complexity, too (e.g. length).

> Phobos did it wrong though with handling char[] different from 
> T[].

It is only for ranges, and I think it's a good decision.