The CAPI Manifesto

[Walter Bright]

On 10/16/2011 9:28 PM, Jude Young wrote:
> Please excuse my ignorance,
> but several types in D do not currently translate well into C.
>
> For example, strings in D are not '\0' terminated, which breaks with C.

This is incorrect. String literals in D are 0 terminated, as in C. C has a 
convention that strings are 0 terminated, but it isn't part of the core 
language. In D, you can terminate a string with 0 if you want to, or not.

> This is not usually a problem, and it's easy to wrap the function in the
> translated header file to automate that particular process.

This would fall under attempting to fix the api, which would be beyond the scope 
of the library.


> It seems that your proposal would disallow this particular example.
> The translation code would have to be somewhere, what is the argument against
> allowing it?

D access to the C API should be direct, and not include hidden costs like 
translation layers.


> In my (admittedly ignorant) opinion, it seems that allowing the automatic
> translation of D types to C types
> would fit very well, otherwise you'll have to add them yourself every time you
> wish to call C.

C doesn't actually even have a 'string' type.