how to use a lib in d

[Andrew Wiley]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 12:34 PM, maarten van damme
<maartenvd1994 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks to everyone, I got it to compile :D
>
> Still don't get the point of a lib file. I'm used to program java and there
> you can compile to a jar-libary, a lib in d is obviously not the same.
>

In a machine-compiled language, a library just contains straight
binary, and you need a header or an import file (di) to tell the
compiler exactly what code is in that library. This is because unlike
Java, where type information is preserved in bytecode,
machine-compiled code loses a lot of type information during the
transition from code to binary. For example, if I have void add(int a,
uint b) and I compile it, I can no longer tell you that a and b have
different types.
At least, this is how I understand it.