C-binding external array.

[ciechowoj via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Tuesday, 9 August 2016 at 15:41:08 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
wrote:
>
> Well, you can via properties:
>
> @property int* tabp() { return tab.ptr; }
>
> tabp[elem];

This is nice. The best would be to have it with the same name as 
original symbol, but I can't imagine how it could be done.

> Essentially, tab is a symbol that points at some undetermined 
> number of elements. Since it's undetermined, D doesn't allow 
> safe easy access.
>
> If you did int *tab, then it would think the symbol points at a 
> pointer.
>
> tab.ptr is a shortcut to &tab[0].
>
> You could potentially do int tab, and then use (&tab)[elem].
>
> Or if you know the number of elements, you can just declare 
> them.
>
> If it were me, I'd access it via tab.ptr, because it *is* an 
> unsafe operation and I'd want to highlight that for future 
> readers.
>
> If something defines tab's length, I'd highly recommend 
> wrapping the two:
>
> extern(C) int tabLength(); // mythical mechanism or no?
>
> @property int[] dtab { return tab.ptr[0 .. tabLength]; }

And this is even better. However, I suppose you are right and I 
should stick to `tab.ptr`.