Optimizing Java using D

[Timon Gehr via Digitalmars-d]

Please don't under-quote, thanks.

>>>> Pointers are perfectly fine as long as there is no pointer arithmetic.
>>> Wrong. Merely holding a pointer (i.e. a physical address) is unsafe already.
>>> Non-deep serialization, or any other "preservation" of such a struct and GC
>>> is unable to keep the track of pointers. GC moves the object around or deletes
>>> it, and you have a tiny black hole in your app.
On 07/06/2014 01:45 PM, Wanderer wrote:
> On Sunday, 6 July 2014 at 04:20:21 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
>> That's not 'merely holding a pointer' and it applies to class
>> references just as much.
>
> [...] "proven" that references are as unsafe as
> pointers, [...]

If we are talking about 'merely holding' them, sure.

Otherwise, if one manages to serialize and deserialize a class reference 
non-deeply, it is obviously just as unsafe to dereference it again after 
deserialization as it would be in the case of a pointer.

> [...] reference semantics in order to replace pointers and achieve language and memory safety [...]

To achieve safety, it is sufficient to only allow safe _operations_ on 
pointers, there's nothing particularly unsafe about pointers per se.


BTW, in case this discussion is still about settling whether counting 
the number of swaps of a sorting algorithm is relevant at all, then 
there is a much easier way: There are sorting algorithms where there are 
asymptotically more swaps than compares in the respective worst cases.