Learning delegates

[Rémy Mouëza]

On Sunday, 8 September 2019 at 10:04:57 UTC, Joel wrote:
> I'm trying to understand delegates. Is there any good ways I 
> can get a better understanding of them?


I am no compiler implementer, so what is below may contain a lot 
of inaccuracies and conceptual shortcuts, but here is my view of 
delegates in D.  I hope this helps.

Delegates are fat function pointers.

D arrays are also fat function pointers: they can be implemented 
as a struct with a size_t length and a pointer to the data:

     sruct DArray(T) {
         size_t length;
         T * data;
     }

D delegates can be implemented as a pointer to some context data 
and a function pointer, something similar to D arrays:

     struct DDelegate(Context, Return, Args) {
         Context context;
         Return function(Args) functionPointer;
     }

The context can be:
- a struct value
- a class instance
- some data from a local function frame when the delegate is used 
as a closure.

The compiler replaces a call to the delegate in the source code 
by a call to the function pointer with the right data for runtime.
Something like:

     dg.functionPointer(dg.context, "hello, world");