Our Sister

[Nick Treleaven via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 27 May 2016 at 21:25:50 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 05/27/2016 05:02 PM, Era Scarecrow wrote:
>>   With the current state of things, I'll just take your word 
>> on it.
>
> Reasoning is simple - yes we could safely convert to 
> const(char)[] but that means effectively all refcounting is 
> lost for that string. So we can convert but in an explicit 
> manner, e.g. str.toGCThisWillCompletelySuckMan. -- Andrei

We could have:

const(char)[] s = rcstr.stealSlice;

Which is null* if the refcount is > 1. rcstr would then be empty 
on success. In fact if with the RC DIP we guarantee the memory 
doesn't escape, stealSlice could return string.

*Or better, return an Option.