A couple of thoughts/queries.

[Bill Baxter]

Christopher Wright wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Robby wrote:
>>> Anyways, what I'm in hopes of finding is a way to tell the compiler 
>>> that I never want null, ever. I want an instance of the class and 
>>> that's that. The whole idea of taking every lil runtime hit for 
>>> checking  and the code cruft for writing it when in fact it's 
>>> something that seems to be easy for a compiler to do the work for me.
>>
>> The hardware will do the check for null pointer for you every time you 
>> do a dereference.
> 
> I wouldn't mind this. Only problem is, you don't get a file or line 
> number. You don't get any clue where the problem is. You're left with 
> debugging by printfs or attaching a debugger, and D doesn't have great 
> debugger support at the moment. Either way takes much more time than 
> simply reading an exception.
> 
> You might be able to trap SIGSEGV and output the last file and line 
> number executed. The former's easy; the latter might require more upkeep 
> than watching pointer dereferences.

ddbg does a pretty decent job on Windows.  Still, it gives me no stack 
trace upon "access violation" a significant fraction of the time.  When 
it works it's great, though.  You should definitely be using it if 
you're on Windows.  I have also found that Windbg can sometimes get a 
stack trace when ddbg can't.

If you're not on Windows then I presume gdb works?  I guess that doesn't 
have any D-specific knowledge.  Support for D in zerobugs is still 
vaporware?

Still, I'm with you.  Getting a stack trace should be easier. 
Especially considering there have been patches to phobos floating around 
for a year at least that already implement it.

--bb