Phobos 3 Discussion Notes - 02-01-2024

[Paul Backus]

On Tuesday, 6 February 2024 at 14:41:27 UTC, Martyn wrote:
> Curious to know how this will work for D. Will Allocators be 
> available for BetterC as well? I certainly hope so!

Nothing's set in stone yet, but in the proposal I'm working on, 
there is nothing stopping allocators from being available in 
BetterC.

> If so, I guess the **default** Allocator will be the GC one, 
> and can still be disabled. Being able to change the default (or 
> change locally like in a function or pass it as parameter) 
> would provide a lot of flexibility.

In my proposal, when you use a library container (like an array, 
a hash table, a binary tree, etc.), you can specify what type of 
allocator you want to use as a template parameter (as in, 
`Array!(int, GC)`). It will probably default to the GC, but you 
can just as easily use malloc, or even a custom allocator that 
you write yourself.

I'm not planning to include a global default allocator. Built-in 
language features like `new`, dynamic arrays, associative arrays, 
and delegate contexts will always use the GC, and there will not 
be an option to change this.