The D standard library is built on GC, is that a negative or positive?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Tue, Dec 13, 2022 at 08:47:29PM -0500, Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 12/13/22 8:18 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 13, 2022 at 07:11:34AM +0000, thebluepandabear via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > I was speaking to one of my friends on D language and he spoke about
> > > how he doesn't like D language due to the fact that its standard
> > > library is built on top of GC (garbage collection).
> > > 
> > > He said that if he doesn't want to implement GC he misses out on the
> > > standard library, which for him is a big disadvantage.
> > > 
> > > Does this claim have merit? I am not far enough into learning D, so I
> > > haven't touched GC stuff yet, but I am curious what the D community
> > > has to say about this issue.
> > 
> > 1) No, this claim has no merit.  However, I sympathize with the reaction
> > because that's the reaction I myself had when I first found D online. I
> > came from a strong C/C++ background, got fed up with C++ and was looking
> > for a new language closer to my ideals of what a programming language
> > should be.  Stumbled across D, which caught my interest.  Then I saw the
> > word "GC" and my knee-jerk reaction was, "what a pity, the rest of the
> > language looks so promising, but GC? No thanks."  It took me a while to
> > realize the flaw in my reasoning.  Today, I wholeheartedly embrace the
> > GC.
> 
> So while I, too, don't hate the GC and embrace it, the truth really is
> that way way too much is dependent on the GC.
> 
> as I alluded to in my previous post:
> 
> ```d
> void main() @nogc
> {
>    import std.conv;
>    auto v = "42".to!int;
> }
> ```
> 
> fails to compile. Why? Surely, it can't use the GC for converting a
> string to an integer? Well, it doesn't. But if the string you give it
> happens to not contain a string representation of an integer, it wants
> to throw an exception. And the act of allocating and throwing that
> exception needs the GC.
> 
> We really really need to fix it. It completely cuts the legs out of
> the answer "if you don't want the gc, use @nogc". If we do fix it, all
> these questions pretty much just go away. It goes from something like
> 20% of phobos being nogc-compatible to 80%.
[...]

Hmm.  Whatever happened to that proposal for GC-less exceptions?
Something about allocating the exception from a static buffer and
freeing it in the catch block or something?


T

-- 
Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares? -- Erich Schubert