Hello,

I apologize for asking such n00bish questions... I come from a C#/Java background, and have never programmed with explicit pointers before.

Two questions -- First, why won't this work?

int main(char[][] args) {

    Bar baz = new Bar();
    for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
        writefln(baz.arr[i].x);
    }
    return 0;

}

class Foo {

    public int x;

    this(int y) {
        x = y;
    }

}

class Bar {

    public Foo*[5] arr;

    public this() {
        for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
            Foo z = new Foo(i);
            arr[i] = &z;
        }
    }

}

It gives me an "access violation"... The GC shouldn't have killed anything; I still have pointers, neh?

Second question: Is there any way to define a rectangular array (one of the optimized ones, not the dynamic-arrays-of-arrays things) that has its size determined at compile time?

Thanks!
Best of wishes,
Robert

On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 01:44:26 +0000 (UTC), xycos wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I apologize for asking such n00bish questions... I come from a C#/Java background, and have never programmed with explicit pointers before.
> 
> Two questions -- First, why won't this work?

Why do you need explicit pointers? This works ...

 class Bar {

     public Foo[5] arr;

     public this() {
         for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
             arr[i] = new Foo(i);
         }
     }

 }

Remember that a class object variable is really a reference to the object sitting on the heap - a pointer if you will.

> It gives me an "access violation"... The GC shouldn't have killed anything; I still have pointers, neh?

Your original code has ...

 class Bar {

     public Foo*[5] arr;

     public this() {
         for(int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
             Foo z = new Foo(i);
             arr[i] = &z;
         }
     }
 }

The '&z' phrase takes the address of the local variable 'z' and not the address of the object on the heap.

> Second question: Is there any way to define a rectangular array (one of the optimized ones, not the dynamic-arrays-of-arrays things) that has its size determined at compile time?

Not yet. This is planned for v2 of D. Until then you need to do some of the work yourself y using a single-dimension array and calculating the offsets yourself.

  int x[5,6] is equivalent to x[30]

  If you want to reference i,j then you calc the index as x[i*5+j]

-- 
Derek
(skype: derek.j.parnell)
Melbourne, Australia
"Down with mediocrity!"
22/08/2006 11:56:25 AM

Heh; that was fast! Thanks so much!