Change representation of dynamic arrays?

[Oskar Linde]

Janice Caron wrote:

> I had always assumed that, from the start, you designed it as { ptr,
> length } deliberately in order to help the garbage collector.
> 
> If you change it, then you will be maintaining a pointer (the end
> pointer) to something beyond the end of the array. For example,
> suppose I do:
> 
>     int[] s = new int[4];
>     int[] t = new int[1000];
> 
> now t.begin might end up being equal to s.end. 

All array allocations in D allocate an extra byte just to prevent this.

But now when we do
> 
>     t = null;
> 
> or t goes out of scope or we otherwise assign t, suddenly that array
> can no longer be freed, because the end pointer of s points to it.

-- 
Oskar