[OT] Some neat ideas from the Kotlin language

[Xinok via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 23 February 2016 at 19:43:43 UTC, rsw0x wrote:
> ...
> How does this differ from the example I gave where the branch 
> is only taken if the pointer is non-null?

D doesn't prevent you from dereferencing a null pointer whereas 
these scenarios should be impossible in Kotlin as well as Rust. 
Case and point, this code compiles without issue but crashes at 
runtime:

     int* foo()
     {
         return null;
     }

     void main()
     {
         if(int* ptr = new int)
         {
             ptr = foo();  // Whoops...
             *ptr = 35;    // Crash
         }
     }

In D, pointers and reference types can spontaneously become null 
under almost any context. That's the difference.