I'm a big fan of betterC. In C, you can initialize an array without specifying the length like this
int ia[ ] = {0, 2, 1};

What is the translation of this? Note that int[] is a different type than C's arrays. https://dlang.org/spec/interfaceToC.html#data_type_compat says there are no equivalent to this. What's the workaround?

Also, is it possible to retrieve the pointer of the sequence of actual data from std.container.array? If all fails I'd like to use this container.

On 26/03/2018 11:16 PM, Aedt wrote:
> I'm a big fan of betterC. In C, you can initialize an array without specifying the length like this
> int ia[ ] = {0, 2, 1};
> 
> What is the translation of this? Note that int[] is a different type than C's arrays. https://dlang.org/spec/interfaceToC.html#data_type_compat says there are no equivalent to this. What's the workaround?
> 
> Also, is it possible to retrieve the pointer of the sequence of actual data from std.container.array? If all fails I'd like to use this container.

Scroll further down.

C: T[] -> D: T*

https://dlang.org/spec/interfaceToC.html#passing_d_array

On 03/26/2018 12:16 PM, Aedt wrote:
> I'm a big fan of betterC. In C, you can initialize an array without specifying the length like this
> int ia[ ] = {0, 2, 1};
> 
> What is the translation of this?

The language doesn't have that feature. But there's a PR to add `staticArray` to the standard library [1]. When that gets in, you can write:

    import std.array;
    auto ia = [0, 2, 1].staticArray; /* ia is an int[3] */

[...]
> Also, is it possible to retrieve the pointer of the sequence of actual data from std.container.array? If all fails I'd like to use this container.

Take the address of the first element:

    import std.container.array: Array;
    Array!int a = [1, 2, 3];
    int* p = &a[0];
    assert(*p == 1);
    assert(*++p == 2);
    assert(*++p == 3);

Be aware that the pointer potentially becomes invalid when you append to the array.


[1] https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/6178

On Monday, 26 March 2018 at 10:16:55 UTC, Aedt wrote:
> I'm a big fan of betterC. In C, you can initialize an array without specifying the length like this
> int ia[ ] = {0, 2, 1};


That's the equivalent of D's static arrays if a variable, and is passed to C functions as a pointer. So important to note it is two different beasts in different contexts.

I recently wrote about this here:
https://forum.dlang.org/thread/uhibzcfwzqzqqfbrckup@forum.dlang.org

so read that post for some more detail, especially with relation to `extern` variables.

> Also, is it possible to retrieve the pointer of the sequence of actual data from std.container.array? If all fails I'd like to use this container.

address of first element for that, but if you are using a built-in D array, you can also just `arr.ptr`.