toString vs. toUtf8

[Jason House]

Walter Bright wrote:

> Gregor Richards wrote:
>> Would you prefer if int => int32, long =>
>> int64, short => int16, byte => int8, real => float80 (portability be
>> damned), double => float64, float => float32? They'd certainly be more
>> obvious, but I can tell you I'd go crazy.
> 
> Those get requested now and then, but I agree they are awful. They're a
> legacy from the C world where the sizes of basic types are unknown.

The first bullet on http://www.digitalmars.com/d/portability.html implies
some wiggle room on this issue.

I really liked how D got rid of size ambiguity at first... all the way until
I started developing on machines that were not 32 bit.  When I don't care
about the true size, I feel guilty using "int" all over the place because
it is a fixed size.

I'd love to see both a fixed and variable size option available.  Maybe:
int - variable size
int32 - fixed size
int64 - fixed size

If that's done, the size of types become obvious when the programmer cares
about them and may make size-sensitive code more obvious.