D Documentation  
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  1. Introduction
    1. A simple tutorial
    2. Switching to D
      1. From C/C++
      2. From Java
      3. From Pascal/Delphi
      4. From PHP :)
    3. An advanced tutorial
  2. Language Reference
    1. General syntax
    2. Statements
    3. Types
    4. Error Handling
    5. Memory Management
  3. Std. runtime library (Phobos)
    1. std.base64
    2. std.boxer
    3. std.compiler
    4. std.conv
    5. std.ctype
    6. std.date
    7. std.file
    8. std.format
    9. std.gc
    10. std.intrinsic
    11. std.math
    12. std.md5
    13. std.mmfile
    14. std.outbuffer
    15. std.path
    16. std.process
    17. std.random
    18. std.recls
    19. std.regexp
    20. std.socket
    21. std.socketstream
    22. std.stdint
    23. std.stdio
    24. std.stream
    25. std.string
    26. std.system
    27. std.thread
    28. std.uri
    29. std.utf
    30. std.zip
    31. std.zlib
  4. Libraries and Tools
    1. mango
    2. Build
  5. Related Links
  6. About this documentation
From C/C++
You may already have noticed that the D syntax is similar to C syntax so this should be easy to get used to.
D is also just as powerful as C++, it just dropped some really problematic things and added some great new things.

Major additions to C++ include:
  • Garbage collection. Don't worry about your objects :)
  • Arrays with known length, array slicing, array concatenation
  • Class syntax and semantics resemble more the way it's done in Java than C++
  • Less (!) pointers. You could say almost no more pointers - but you can still use them if you want to!
  • Strings in the language core, strings are NOT zero terminated!

Things that were dropped:

  • No more header files. Everything that belongs together should be in one file (ie "module").
  • No more preprocessor. You will perhaps miss it at the beginning.
  • No forward declarations. (I don't really know if this is 100% true)
  • The "->" operator was completely replaced by "."
  • Implicit casts - you have to cast explicitly - it's better that way.

Things that were changed and that you have to be aware of:
  • You can't define and declare structs and class in just one statement. So you don't need to type a semicolon after struct/class anymore. Example:
    struct Foo
{
  int x, y;
}
Foo foo;
  • The constructor and destructor are always called "this" and "~this". The base class' constructor can be called with "super":
    class Foo
{
  this()
  {
    // Do something
    super();
    // Do something
  }
  ~this()
  {
    // Blah
  }
}
  • Comparing class references to "null" is done with the "is" operator, because the "==" can be overloaded!
    if (myfoo is null)
{
  //...
}
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