D Programming Language

D Programming Language

"It seems to me that most of the "new" programming languages fall into one of two categories: Those from academia with radical new paradigms and those from large corporations with a focus on RAD and the web. Maybe it's time for a new language born out of practical experience implementing compilers." -- Michael

"Great, just what I need.. another D in programming." -- Segfault

The first Tango Conference will take place Torun, Poland on September 26..28
.



The first D Programming Language Conference took place in Seattle at Amazon, Aug 23..24, 2007.

The D book Learn to Tango with D by Kris Bell, Lars Ivar Igesund, Sean Kelly and Michael Parker is now out.

D is a systems programming language. Its focus is on combining the power and high performance of C and C++ with the programmer productivity of modern languages like Ruby and Python. Special attention is given to the needs of quality assurance, documentation, management, portability and reliability.

The D language is statically typed and compiles directly to machine code. It's multiparadigm, supporting many programming styles: imperative, object oriented, and metaprogramming. It's a member of the C syntax family, and its appearance is very similar to that of C++. For a quick comparison of the features, see this comparison of D with C, C++, C# and Java.

It is not governed by a corporate agenda or any overarching theory of programming. The needs and contributions of the D programming community form the direction it goes.

There are currently two implementations, the Digital Mars DMD package for Win32 and x86 Linux, and the GCC D Compiler package for several platforms, including Windows and Mac OS X.

A large and growing collection of D source code and projects are at dsource. More links to innumerable D wikis, libraries, tools, media articles, etc. are at dlinks.

This document is available as a pdf, as well as in Japanese and Portugese translations. A German book Programming in D: Introduction to the new Programming Language is available, as well as a Japanese book D Language Perfect Guide.

This is an example D program illustrating some of the capabilities:

#!/usr/bin/dmd -run
/* sh style script syntax is supported */

/* Hello World in D
To compile:
dmd hello.d
or to optimize:
dmd -O -inline -release hello.d
*/

import std.stdio;

void main(string[] args)
{
writefln("Hello World, Reloaded");

// auto type inference and built-in foreach
foreach (argc, argv; args)
{
// Object Oriented Programming
auto cl = new CmdLin(argc, argv);
// Improved typesafe printf
writefln(cl.argnum, cl.suffix, " arg: %s", cl.argv);
// Automatic or explicit memory management
delete cl;
}

// Nested structs and classes
struct specs
{
// all members automatically initialized
int count, allocated;
}

// Nested functions can refer to outer
// variables like args
specs argspecs()
{
specs* s = new specs;
// no need for '->'
s.count = args.length; // get length of array with .length
s.allocated = typeof(args).sizeof; // built-in native type properties
foreach (argv; args)
s.allocated += argv.length * typeof(argv[0]).sizeof;
return *s;
}

// built-in string and common string operations
writefln("argc = %d, " ~ "allocated = %d",
argspecs().count, argspecs().allocated);
}

class CmdLin
{
private int _argc;
private string _argv;

public:
this(int argc, string argv) // constructor
{
_argc = argc;
_argv = argv;
}

int argnum()
{
return _argc + 1;
}

string argv()
{
return _argv;
}

string suffix()
{
string suffix = "th";
switch (_argc)
{
case 0:
suffix = "st";
break;
case 1:
suffix = "nd";
break;
case 2:
suffix = "rd";
break;
default:
break;
}
return suffix;
}
}