Do equality checks for dynamic arrays attempt to shortcut with pointer comparison

[dnspies]

On Thursday, 3 April 2014 at 08:27:38 UTC, simendsjo wrote:
> On 04/03/2014 09:23 AM, dnspies wrote:
>> On Thursday, 3 April 2014 at 07:16:53 UTC, simendsjo wrote:
>>> On 04/03/2014 09:03 AM, dnspies wrote:
>>>> If two dynamic arrays point to the same place in memory, is 
>>>> it fast to
>>>> compare them for equality? or does every element still have 
>>>> to be
>>>> compared?
>>>
>>> Equals will first check for memory location.
>>> This is from the runtime:
>>>
>>> bool opEquals(Object lhs, Object rhs)
>>> {
>>>    // If aliased to the same object or both null => equal
>>>    if (lhs is rhs) return true;
>>>
>>>    // If either is null => non-equal
>>>    if (lhs is null || rhs is null) return false;
>>>
>>>    // If same exact type => one call to method opEquals
>>>    if (typeid(lhs) is typeid(rhs) || 
>>> typeid(lhs).opEquals(typeid(rhs)))
>>>        return lhs.opEquals(rhs);
>>>
>>>    // General case => symmetric calls to method opEquals
>>>    return lhs.opEquals(rhs) && rhs.opEquals(lhs);
>>> }
>>
>> But this only applies to objects with a class type.  A dynamic 
>> array
>> isn't an object with a class type, it's a builtin type. Does 
>> it use this
>> opEquals?  Can a dynamic array even be cast to an Object?  I 
>> don't see
>> that "lhs is rhs" will return true since the array 
>> startptr-length pairs
>> may still occupy different places in memory even if the 
>> contents of
>> those arrays occupy the same place.
>
> If the arrays have different lengths, they are obviously not 
> equal.
> Here's a quick test of the semantics of is on arrays.
>
>     auto a = [1, 2];
>     auto b = a;
>     assert(a is b);
>     b = a[0..$];
>     assert(a is b);
>     b = a[0..1];
>     assert(a !is b);
>     assert(a.ptr == b.ptr);

Ok, I accept that for dynamic arrays, the "is" keyword appears to 
be overloaded. (I still haven't found documentation for "is" as 
you can see from one of my other forum posts.  I'm having trouble 
figuring out where to look)

But I still don't see how this opEquals which takes two Objects 
could possibly accept dynamic arrays instead.  Object is a 
class-type so its instances can only be accessed by reference 
(which is only a single pointer internally).  Thus the size of 
the parameters to this function is two pointers.  But a dynamic 
array is a pointer paired with a length (which is the same size 
as two pointers) meaning the size of the parameters two any 
function taking two arrays would have to be four pointers.  So it 
seems like any function which would work on both would have to be 
templated (but this one isn't).  Are you sure that this is the 
opEquals that gets used with dynamic arrays and not a different 
one somewhere else?