https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24335

          Issue ID: 24335
           Summary: Class Downcast
           Product: D
           Version: D2
          Hardware: All
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P1
         Component: dmd
          Assignee: nobody@puremagic.com
          Reporter: bugzilla@digitalmars.com

deadalnix writes:

Currently, we use a linear algorithm to downcast and we reach this algorithm via a call int he runtime. This prevent the optimizer from doing anything about it, in addition to be slow. The problem is similar to 1/. The whole check can be made trivial if we let the compiler prebake some data for us, namely an array of primary parents. Let's see what it looks like in the first example, when b is not final.

class A {}
class B : A {}

auto foo(A a) {
    return cast(B) a;
}
Which we can do as follow:

auto foo(A a) {
    // The primaries generated by the compiler for us.
    auto tidA = typeid(A);
    assert(tidA.primaries = [tidA]);
    auto tidB = typeid(B);
    assert(tidB.primaries = [tidA, tidB]);

    auto t = typeid(a);
    auto depth = tidB.primaries.length - 1;

    if (t.primary.length <= depth) {
        return null;
    }

    if (t.primary[depth] == tidB) {
        return a;
    }

    return null;
}

This is starting to look good, now we have general downcast in a form that is not only really fast to perform, but also completely transparent to the optimizer.

https://forum.dlang.org/post/hteuczyclxajakrisxjd@forum.dlang.org

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