Proposal for fixing dchar ranges

[Ary Borenszweig]

On 3/10/14, 3:30 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 3/10/2014 6:35 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> An idea to fix the whole problems I see with char[] being treated
>> specially by
>> phobos: introduce an actual string type, with char[] as backing, that
>> is a dchar
>> range, that actually dictates the rules we want. Then, make the
>> compiler use
>> this type for literals.
>
> Proposals to make a string class for D have come up many times. I have a
> kneejerk dislike for it. It's a really strong feature for D to have
> strings be an array type, and I'll go to great lengths to keep it that way.

You can also look at Erlang, where strings are just lists of numbers. 
Eventually they realized it was a huge mistake and introduced another 
type, a binary string, which is much more efficient and works as expected.

I think making strings behave like arrays is a design mistake.