Translate Operator
The D operator xlate is used to perform a translation from an
input expression to one of the defined translation output structures. The xlate
operator is used in an expression of the form:
xlate < output-type > ( input-expression )
For example, to invoke the hypothetical translator for FILE structs defined above
and access the file_fd member, you would write the expression:
xlate <struct file_info *>(f)->file_fd;
where f is a D variable of type FILE *. The xlate expression
itself is assigned the type defined by the output-type. Once a translator
is defined, it can be used to translate input expressions to either
the translator output struct type, or to a pointer to that struct.
If you translate an input expression to a struct, you can either
dereference a particular member of the output immediately using the “.” operator,
or you can assign the entire translated struct to another D variable
to make a copy of the values of all the members. If
you dereference a single member, the D compiler will only generate code
corresponding to the expression for that member. You may not apply the
& operator to a translated struct to obtain its address, as the
data object itself does not exist until it is copied or one
of its members is referenced.
If you translate an input expression to a pointer to a struct,
you can either dereference a particular member of the output immediately using
the -> operator, or you can dereference the pointer using the unary
* operator, in which case the result behaves as if you translated
the expression to a struct. If you dereference a single member, the
D compiler will only generate code corresponding to the expression for that
member. You may not assign a translated pointer to another D variable
as the data object itself does not exist until it is copied
or one of its members is referenced, and therefore cannot be addressed.
A translator declaration may omit expressions for one or more members of
the output type. If an xlate expression is used to access a
member for which no translation expression is defined, the D compiler will
produce an appropriate error message and abort the program compilation. If the
entire output type is copied by means of a structure assignment, any
members for which no translation expressions are defined will be filled with
zeroes.
In order to find a matching translator for an xlate operation, the
D compiler examines the set of available translators in the following order:
First, the compiler looks for a translation from the exact input expression type to the exact output type.
Second, the compiler resolves the input and output types by following any typedef aliases to the underlying type names, and then looks for a translation from the resolved input type to the resolved output type.
Third, the compiler looks for a translation from a compatible input type to the resolved output type. The compiler uses the same rules as it does for determining compatibility of function call arguments with function prototypes in order to determine if an input expression type is compatible with a translator's input type.
If no matching translator can be found according to these rules, the
D compiler produces an appropriate error message and program compilation fails.
