create fixed length string of characters

[Nick Treleaven]

On Friday, 16 August 2024 at 16:30:09 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> Well, you if you use dup, you're asking for a mutable array, 
> whereas if you use idup, you're asking for an immutable array.

Yes, `idup` may be needed e.g. for overloads varying on 
mutability.

> Whether the result of dup is then able to be implicitly 
> converted to immutable based on whether the operation is pure 
> depends on the element type and where the result is used.

If it can't be converted to immutable then `idup` won't work 
either.

> So, dup may very well work in this particular case, but in the 
> general case, you really want to be using idup if you want 
> immutable. And in this particular example, all it would take to 
> make the result not immutable would be to use auto instead of 
> string.

Because `idup` exists, sure use that. But writing `immutable s = 
a.dup;` does the same thing.