Features Overview

Navigate D's implementation of a few key programming language concepts.

• Garbage Collection
  • Manual invocation
  • @nogc subset
• Functions
  • Function Overloading
  • ref and out function parameters
  • ref functions
  • Function Delegates
  • Nested functions
  • Function literals
  • Closures
  • Typesafe variadic arguments
  • Lazy function argument evaluation
  • Uniform Function Call Syntax
• Arrays
  • Lightweight arrays
  • Resizeable arrays
  • Built-in strings
  • Array slicing
  • Array bounds checking
  • Array literals
  • String switches
  • Associative arrays
• OOP
  • Object Orientation
  • Interfaces
  • Single inheritance of implementation/multiple inheritance of interfaces
  • Operator overloading
  • Modules
  • No built-in dynamic class loading
  • Nested classes
  • Inner (adaptor) classes
  • Covariant return types
  • Properties
• Performance
  • Inline assembler
  • Direct access to hardware
  • Lightweight objects
  • Explicit memory allocation control
  • Independent of VM
  • Direct native code gen
• Generic Programming
  • Implicit Type Inference
  • foreach
  • Ranges
  • Algorithms
  • Aliases
  • Templates
    • Aggregate Templates
    • Function Templates
    • Implicit Function Template Instantiation
    • Partial and Explicit Template Specialization
    • Value Template Parameters
    • Alias Template Parameters
    • Variadic Template Parameters
    • Template Constraints
    is expressions
  • typeof
• Metaprogramming
  • Compile Time Function Evaluation
  • Template Mixins
  • String Mixins
  • static if
  • static foreach
• Reliability
  • Contract Programming
  • Unit testing
  • Immutable data
  • Pure functions
  • Static construction order
  • Initialization by default
  • RAII (implicit destructor calls)
  • Exception handling
  • Scope guards
  • try-catch-finally blocks
  • Memory-safe subset
• Concurrency & Parallelism
  • Concurrency
  • Fibers
  • std.parallelism.parallel
  • Thread Local Storage by default
  • Shared data
  • Thread synchronization primitives
• Types
  • Structs and Unions
  • Enumerated types
  • 80 bit floating point
  • Complex and Imaginary
  • Pointers
  • Tuples
  • Alias This
• Compatibility
  • C-like syntax
  • Support for all C types
  • if, while, do, for, switch, goto
  • Direct access to C
  • Import C code
  • Better C subset
  • Use existing debuggers
  • Struct member alignment control
  • Generates standard object files
  • Obviates need for a macro text preprocessor
• Other
  • Conditional compilation
  • Unicode source text
  • with statement
  • User-Defined Attributes
  • Documentation comments
  • Documented unit tests