Small troubles [Was: Re: Feature...]

[bearophile]

Andrei Alexandrescu:
> The book is finished and is on schedule. It's been out of my hands for a 
> while - currently in the final copyedit stage. (Walter, last chance to 
> remove octal literals.) I'll publish a schedule on my website soon.

Walter doesn't want to change octals, so I think it's a waste of time to keep talking about that.
There are several other small problems in D2 that deserve a look. They are small but important things. Please talk about those.
I list most of them here in approximate order of decreasing importance:

Syntax & semantics for array assigns
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3971

[module system] Tiding up the imports
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3819

Signed lengths (and other built-in values)
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3843

[missing error] Array literal length doesn't match
Array literal assign to array of different length
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3849
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3948

opCast(bool) in classes is bug-prone
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3926

Require opEquals/opCmp in a class the defines toHash
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3844

automatic joining of adjacent strings is bad
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3827

pure/nothrow functions/delegates are a subtype of the nonpure/throw ones
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3833

const arguments/instance attributes in conditions/invariants
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3856

bool opEquals() for structs instead of int opEquals()
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3967

byte ==> sbyte
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3936
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3850

A bug-prone situation with AAs
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3825

Arguments and attributes with the same name
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3878

More useful and more clean 'is'
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3981

Those things are small breaking changes, so it's much better to think about them sooner.
If you want I can explain better each one of them.

Bye,
bearophile