Confirm: D escapes auto ref similar to Go language

Brother Bill brotherbill at mail.com
Sun Aug 24 15:03:12 UTC 2025


On page 549 of Programming in D, it appears that D supports 
'escaping' local variables to the heap, when returning their 
address.

This is similar to Go.
Is this what is actually going on?
Is this 'safe' to do?

```
&result: AC067AF730
&result: AC067AF730
ptrSum : AC067AF7B0 (2 + 3)
sum    : (4 * 5)
```

source/app.d
```
import std.stdio;

void main() {
     string * ptrSum = &parenthesized("2 + 3");
	string sum = parenthesized("4 * 5");

     writefln("ptrSum : %s %s", ptrSum, *ptrSum);
     writefln("sum    : %s", sum);
}

auto ref string parenthesized(string phrase) {
     string result = '(' ~ phrase ~ ')';
	writeln("&result: ", &result);
     return result;      // ← compilation ERROR
}
```


More information about the Digitalmars-d-learn mailing list