Challenge: write a reference counted slice that works as much as possible like a built-in slice

[Stanislav Blinov]

On Tuesday, 9 November 2021 at 17:15:59 UTC, Atila Neves wrote:

> This is already something we're looking into it as part of the 
> vision for D. I personally will not rest until such a library 
> type can be written and used in @safe code. Nobody* should be 
> calling malloc/free, just like nobody should be writing 
> new/delete in C++14 and newer.
>
>
> * Obviously for values of "nobody" that are tiny but not 
> exactly equal to 0.

Au contraire. EVERYBODY should be calling malloc/free or any 
other allocators, including the GC. No matter how hard you try, 
you CANNOT abstract the machine and remain a systems language at 
the same time. If you don't want to be worrying about such 
things, there are other, higher level, languages.

It's the calling of such APIs that must be made @safe. Walter is 
attempting just that with @live. Incidentally, if THAT is made 
possible, you will be able to have the cake and eat it too.

BTW, at the moment, "safety" of GC is a lie. Because it can run 
arbitrary unsafe code within a @safe function.