Best interface for memcpy() (and the string.h family of functions)

[kinke]

On Thursday, 30 May 2019 at 00:18:06 UTC, Stefanos Baziotis wrote:
> The current state is that we think that slices should be enough 
> for this need.
> Meaning, you don't need the third size parameter. In this case, 
> ref is better. On the other, in other cases I think that 
> pointers
> are more intuitive.

In D, there's no ugly and unsafe need to pass slices to memcpy, 
as a simple `dst[] = src[]` can do the job much better, boiling 
down to a memcpy (with 3rd param) if T is a POD (and the two 
slices don't overlap, have the same length etc. if bounds checks 
are enabled).

Taking a slice by ref, if I understand you correctly, would 
firstly only work with slice lvalues (i.e., no `ptr[0..$-1]` 
rvalues), and secondly IMO be very confusing and bad for generic 
code, as I would expect the slice itself to be memcopied then, 
not its contents.