char[] ported from C to char[0] in the D core library

[Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Wednesday, 9 September 2015 at 16:49:39 UTC, badlink wrote:
> The struct core.sys.linux.sys.inotify.inotify_event contains 
> the field "char[0] name" which corresponds to "char name[]" in 
> C.
>
> Why it has been translated to "char[0]" ?

In that structure, the name is appended directly to the end of 
the data instead of pointed to. The size isn't known at compile 
time, so a zero-length placeholder is there instead.

You'd access it by using the .ptr property and get the length out 
of the `len` field.

> For me "char*" would have been more appropriate.

That's typically right, but since this case does it in-place 
instead of pointed, the zero length array is most accurate.