Bug 6869 – Disallow array to pointer cast

This is a spinoff of bug 3990 In DMD 2.056 this code compiles: void main() { int[] a1 = [5, 4, 3]; int* p1 = cast(int*)a1; // no compile error here } Similar code using user-created struct doesn't compile: struct Foo { int* p; size_t n; } void main() { Foo f; auto x = cast(int*)f; // compile error here } I don't see the need to accept this cast, because allowing the array to pointer cast means introducing/leaving an useless special case, and there in practice this special case is not useful because arrays have the ptr property: struct Foo { int* p; size_t n; } void main() { Foo f; auto x = f.ptr; // OK } So I think cast(int*)a1 should be forbidden.

See some discussion: http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=148090 An answer: http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=148099

Reverted to bug, this isn't an enhancement, it's a bug.

How is it a bug? Implicit conversions from arrays to pointers have been deprecated, but as far as I know this is an intentional feature of D, regardless of if it's a useful/bug prone one or not. Is there any reason you know of why this is not working as intended?

(In reply to comment #3) > How is it a bug? Implicit conversions from arrays to pointers have been > deprecated, but as far as I know this is an intentional feature of D, > regardless of if it's a useful/bug prone one or not. Is there any reason you > know of why this is not working as intended? OK, it's an enhancement then.

So are we going to see the problem reported here as a compilation error?