[Issue 1985] import expression should return ubyte[] not string

[Frank Benoit]

Aarti_pl schrieb:
>> Your argument is right on, but ubyte[] *is* the type that means "I 
>> don't know
>> what the heck this data is, but it's just data, not pointers".  void[] 
>> means "I
>> don't know what the heck this data is, it might even be full of 
>> pointers".  I don't see any way that file that is on disk at *compile 
>> time* could contain
>> pointers that are relevant to the program later on at *run time*.  So 
>> ubyte[]
>> is the proper type.
> 
> I think I understand your way of thinking. But the problem here is 
> different. With void[] you can not do anything, so you have to cast. 
> With ubyte[] you can use data as they are, because they have in fact 
> specific type. But what if file contains array of int's? In such a case 
> you are in exactly same situation as with char[]. Compiler chooses one 
> type to which it casts by default, exactly like currently with char[]. 
> And this choice can be wrong. If it is good or wrong depends only on 
> application. In GUI ubyte[] is more appropriate (e.g. importing icon), 
> but in DB framework string is better (importing db schema).
> 
> Having written this all I slowly get to conclusion that current 
> situation is not so bad :-) char[] would be usually much more 
> appropriate for lower layers in application than ubyte[] (mostly for 
> loading and compiling domain languages). Alternative with void[] is IMHO 
> theoretically better, but practically you will have even more casts in 
> you code... Tough decision... :-)

foreach( c; import("data")){
	// do something
}

- cannot work with void[]
- will always work in a reasonable way with ubyte[]
- might throw UnicodeException with char[]