This is my latest post in the GC series. I had promised the next one would look at non-GC allocation strategies, but as it got longer and longer I decided to break it up into two parts. This part covers stack allocations. The next one will deal with non-GC heap allocations.

If my luck holds out, we're about to see a flurry of guest posts and collaborations over the next few weeks. If that pans out, I expect to publish the part two in mid-late August.

The blog:
https://dlang.org/blog/2017/07/07/go-your-own-way-part-one-the-stack/

Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6ltfwx/go_your_own_way_part_one_of_two_on_nongc/

On Friday, 7 July 2017 at 12:59:44 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> This is my latest post in the GC series. I had promised the next one would look at non-GC allocation strategies, but as it got longer and longer I decided to break it up into two parts. This part covers stack allocations. The next one will deal with non-GC heap allocations.
>
> If my luck holds out, we're about to see a flurry of guest posts and collaborations over the next few weeks. If that pans out, I expect to publish the part two in mid-late August.
>
> The blog:
> https://dlang.org/blog/2017/07/07/go-your-own-way-part-one-the-stack/
>
> Reddit:
> https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6ltfwx/go_your_own_way_part_one_of_two_on_nongc/

Nicely written as usual, keep those posts coming :P

BTW, I noticed that the "Learn" button doesn't point to the DLang Tour, like it does on dlang.org, so I opened a PR to fix this: https://github.com/dlang/D-Blog-Theme/pull/21.

I would add a note to the "static arrays are interchangeable with dynamic arrays" saying that you can... and probably should explicitly slice them with `[]`.

The implicit slice is one of what I see as D's design flaws and brings up a number of problems. dip1000 and similar things might be able to fix the problems without changing the feature, but I won't be surprised if after a couple more years, we see that implicit slice get deprecated.

On Friday, 7 July 2017 at 13:48:47 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> I would add a note to the "static arrays are interchangeable with dynamic arrays" saying that you can... and probably should explicitly slice them with `[]`.
>
> The implicit slice is one of what I see as D's design flaws and brings up a number of problems. dip1000 and similar things might be able to fix the problems without changing the feature, but I won't be surprised if after a couple more years, we see that implicit slice get deprecated.

+1 it only creates confusion

On 7/7/17 8:59 AM, Mike Parker wrote:
> This is my latest post in the GC series. I had promised the next one would look at non-GC allocation strategies, but as it got longer and longer I decided to break it up into two parts. This part covers stack allocations. The next one will deal with non-GC heap allocations.
> 
> If my luck holds out, we're about to see a flurry of guest posts and collaborations over the next few weeks. If that pans out, I expect to publish the part two in mid-late August.
> 
> The blog:
> https://dlang.org/blog/2017/07/07/go-your-own-way-part-one-the-stack/
> 
> Reddit:
> https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6ltfwx/go_your_own_way_part_one_of_two_on_nongc/ 
> 

I thought alloca was an intrinsic? Which means that the compiler generates inline code to add to the stack.

I would think it has to do this, since actually calling a function would generate a new stack frame.

-Steve

On 7/7/17 3:36 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> 
> I thought alloca was an intrinsic? Which means that the compiler generates inline code to add to the stack.

Which would mean that the lack of alloca prototype on Windows is a straight up bug (the fact that you can just add the declaration and it works is pretty good proof).

-Steve

On 7/7/2017 12:36 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> I thought alloca was an intrinsic? Which means that the compiler generates inline code to add to the stack.
> 
> I would think it has to do this, since actually calling a function would generate a new stack frame.

Yes and yes.

On 7/7/2017 12:38 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> Which would mean that the lack of alloca prototype on Windows is a straight up bug (the fact that you can just add the declaration and it works is pretty good proof).

It's in core.stdc.stdlib

On 07-07-17 22:10, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 7/7/2017 12:38 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> Which would mean that the lack of alloca prototype on Windows is a straight up bug (the fact that you can just add the declaration and it works is pretty good proof).
> 
> It's in core.stdc.stdlib

Only for version DigitalMars and GNU.

-- 
Mike Wey

On 7/7/17 4:10 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 7/7/2017 12:38 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> Which would mean that the lack of alloca prototype on Windows is a straight up bug (the fact that you can just add the declaration and it works is pretty good proof).
> 
> It's in core.stdc.stdlib
> 

Since it's an intrinsic (as confirmed by you), maybe we can just drop the version conditions? The compiler will always generate it, regardless of C lib, right? I'll do the PR if you agree (just want to make sure I understand your statements about it).

-Steve