Void initialization

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:24:18 -0500, Bear <joanyleprince at yahoo.fr> wrote:

> gc.malloc actually returns void[]

http://www.d-programming-language.org/phobos/core_memory.html#malloc

Looks like void* to me...

Or is there another function I'm not aware of?  I think it should be  
GC.malloc, not gc.malloc, so maybe I'm missing something...

> Bearophile's suggestion seems to work though, but it doesn't seem to  
> improve
> performance for some reason... I guess I'll have to find some other way  
> to make my
> prog quicker.

Actually, an issue with bearophile's suggestion is that it allocates a  
block marked as containing pointers.  Such a block is bulk-initialized to  
0.

Try this:

float[] f = (cast(float*)GC.malloc(x * TF.sizeof, GC.BlkAttr.NO_SCAN))[0  
.. x];

This will leave the memory uninitialized.

And depending on the usage, this optimization may or may not make a huge  
difference.

-Steve