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Programming in D: The Ultimate Guide for Software Engineers

Value Types vs Reference Types

Explore the distinctions between value types and reference types in D programming. Understand how fixed-length arrays act as value types while slices function as reference types, and learn how these differences influence assignments and memory behavior in your code.

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Fixed-length arrays and slices #

D’s arrays and slices show different behavior when it comes to value type versus reference type.
As we have already seen above, slices are reference types. On the other hand, fixed-length arrays are value types. They own their elements, behaving as individual values:

D
import std.stdio;
void main() {
    int[3] array1 = [ 10, 20, 30 ];
    auto array2 = array1; // array2's elements are different from array1's
  
    array2[0] = 11;
  
    // First array is not affected:
    assert(array1[0] == 10);
    writeln(array1[0]);
}

array1 is a ...