Inability to dup/~ for const arrays of class objects

[Diggory]

On Thursday, 30 May 2013 at 05:54:57 UTC, Maxim Fomin wrote:
> On Thursday, 30 May 2013 at 05:44:43 UTC, Diggory wrote:
>> On Thursday, 30 May 2013 at 05:41:06 UTC, Maxim Fomin wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, 29 May 2013 at 23:45:04 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:
>>>> On 05/29/2013 03:59 PM, Peter Williams wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > I've been trying to find out how non ref array arguments 
>>>> > are
>>>> passed to
>>>> > functions in D but can't find any documentation on it.
>>>>
>>>> The following concepts are relevant:
>>>>
>>>> - Dynamic array: Maintained by the D runtime
>>>
>>> Generally yes, but not always http://dpaste.dzfl.pl/ffbcb449
>>
>> That's not a dynamic array, it's a slice of a static array.
>
> And this is a problem, because article about D slices 
> encourages to call some raw memory (which almost never is 
> directly manipulated and doesn't appear in source code) as a 
> dynamic array, and dynamic array as a slice.

The article about slices on this site - 
http://dlang.org/d-array-article.html is perfectly correct.

>
>>>
>>>> - Fixed-length array (aka static array): Can be on the stack
>>>>
>>>> - Slice: An efficient tool to access a range of elements (of 
>>>> any type of array)
>>>>
>>>> Usually, it is the slice that gets passed:
>>>>
>>>> void foo(int[] slice);
>>>
>>> Isn't it a dynamic array? I don't understand listing slice as 
>>> separate type of arrays or mixing meaning of slice and 
>>> dynamic array. As far as D spec is concerned, slice is a 
>>> SliceExpression which produces dynamic array for array types.
>>
>> You can't directly access dynamic arrays in D, you can only 
>> manipulate views of them using slices. "new int[5]" creates a 
>> new dynamic array internally but only returns a slice of that 
>> array.
>
> That's clear, issue here is misleading definitions used by D 
> slices article.
>
> typeof(slice) => int[]
>
> From array page spec: type[] => dynamic array. So, int[] slice 
> is a parameter of type 'dynamic array'.

Yep, it's misleading but the D documentation is misleading and 
wrong in a lot of places and I'd say here the problems are 
relatively minor. Still they should be fixed.

>
> From expression spec page what slice is:
> SliceExpression:
>    PostfixExpression [ ]
>    PostfixExpression [ AssignExpression .. AssignExpression ]
>
> and clearly 'slice' object is not an expression.

This is talking about the slice operator, not slices. The slice 
operator can be applied to any object which defines it.