void[] and ubyte[]

[Andrej Mitrovic]

On 2/5/13, Stephan <stephan_schiffels at mac.com> wrote:
> In phobos there are places with void[] and places with ubyte[]

One benefit of void[] over ubyte[] is implicit conversion. E.g.:

void input(void[] arr) { }

void main()
{
    input([1, 2]);
    input([1.0, 2.0]);
    input(["foo", "bar"]);
}

You don't get that conversion with byte arrays.

And the benefit of byte[] over void[] is that (at least theoretically
IIRC) the garbage collector won't scan byte arrays but it will scan
void arrays. This means the GC could interpret an element in a void[]
as a pointer and end up never releasing some bit of memory.

Someone should expand on this better than me, but I think that's the gist of it.