"chris jones" <flak@clara.co.uk> wrote in message news:alo02r$njr$2@digitaldaemon.com...
> Thats how Delphi does it, a dynamic array is a pointer, the first 2 words
of
> the memory block are the ref count and the number of elements . The
pointer
> points to the first element of the array so the ref cound is at -8 and lenght is at -4.

That will work, but it's slower than D's implementation. It also makes slices not possible without copying.

> Also in delhpi strings are arrays with copy on write but the neat thing Delphi does is that it automaticly maintans a trailing null char at the
end.
> So to cast a delphi string to a C string you just point at the first char, zero overhead. And because the lenght is stored you dont have to scan the string to determine its length.

D in general tries to put 0 bytes at the ends of character strings for the same reason, but it is not possible for slices.