Pragmatic D Tutorial

This is a pragmatic introduction to the D Programming Language.

Audience

While the goal is to be generic, there are a few assumptions about you, the reader.

  • You can program already. This is not a general tutorial to learn programming. You should know the basics like variables, if-statements, pointers and functions.
  • You can use a command line interface. This tutorial covers compilation from raw compiler invocations. Using an IDE would hide this build process. Since I am using Linux, examples will assume a bash shell, which is the default on all major distributions (including BSD and OS X).

Scope

This tutorial does not explore deeply into the syntax and semantics of D nor does it try to cover every feature. Since D is a large language, it does not make sense to learn everything, before you start using it. Instead this tries to provide pragmatic information to enable you to start coding ASAP. For details, links are provided for further study.

D is multi-paradigm and thus suited for procedural, object-oriented, functional, and generic programming. However, this tutorial is not a guide on design, when to use what paradigm, therefore it does not cover these aspects.

Indices and tables