D Programming Language Area

Introduction

This section aims to be a permanent home for the programs and guides I have made using D. Some of the content has been on this site before but spread across various sections. Admittedly D is not the primary language in use here, but it is a great language and hopefully this new section will help increase awareness of it.

What is the D Programming Language?

From the D website:

The language aims to be fast and reduce errors, both very important features! Reading the aims of the language, there are a lot of things to like about it.

Applications / Programs

The following are D versions of some of the command line programs that are on this site. Source is included with each of them.

To keep the download size small, these are provided as a 7zip archives.

Anim2Bmp (v0.1)

All New! 27/01/2024
Converts an Amiga Animation to a sequence of Windows BMP files!
Download Anim2Bmp (177KB 7Zip)

Avi2Cvc (v2.8) / Bmp2Cvi (v2.4)

Freshly compiled: 20/01/2024
These tools can convert AVI videos and BMP images to a format more suitable for the Cybiko handheld computer. Source is included and demonstrates how modules can be used to reduce code duplication.
Download Avi2Cvc (244KB 7Zip)

Avi2Flc (v0.5)

Freshly compiled: 20/01/2024
Takes an uncompressed/msvc AVI and converts it to an 8bit FLC file which is compatible with VLC. (All new!)
Download Avi2Flc (178KB 7Zip)

Iff2Bmp (v0.3)

Freshly compiled: 20/01/2024 Converts an Amiga 8bit, 24bit or HAM IFF ILBM image to a Windows BMP file. (All new!)
Download Iff2Bmp! (174KB 7Zip) | Read more!

Bmp2Qoi (v0.1)

All New! 07/07/2024
Converts a 24bit bitmap to a QOI compressed image! The quide give more details about the image format and how it was ported to D.
Download Bmp2Qoi (174KB 7Zip) | Read more!

Path Tracer (v0.1a)

All New! 14/02/2024
Port of Andrew Kensler's Path Tracer to D! Read the guide for more about this program and how using D's parallelism made it much faster!
Download Path Tracer (195KB 7Zip) | Read more!

Ray Tracer (v0.1)

All New! 16/02/2024
Port of Andrew Kensler's Ray Tracer to D! Read the guide for benchmarks and more information!
Download Ray Tracer (195KB 7Zip) | Read more!

Squish (v0.2)

All New! 10/02/2024
Command line file compression utility. Experimental, originally used to compress files for the Cybiko. Does a reasonable job with text files.
Download Squish (174KB 7Zip) | Read more!

Guides

• Avi2Cvc - Converting from C to D

  Summary of porting my Cybiko video conversion utility from C to D. The main reasons for this were to improve its memory safety (I had already found one memory issue) and to take advantage of the other benefits that using D provides.
  Read more!

• Avi2Cvc / Bmp2Cvi - Using Modules

  How modules were used to reduce code duplication in these two programs making bug fixing and improvements easier.
  Read more!

• Memory Safety - How D Prevents Out Of Bound Errors

  In C, an out of bounds error / exception occurs if you try to read or write to an area of memory that is outside the amount allocated. This guide shows how D can help prevent this type of error.
  Read more!

• Memory Safety - How D Can Prevent Use After Free Errors

  A 'Use After Free' error is where after giving back (freeing) some memory, you carry on using it, in language like C these can cause security and stability problems. This guide shows how using D can avoid this.
  Read more!

• Squish - Performance Optimisation in D

  Porting my Squish compression program from C to D initially resulted in terrible performance, this guide shows how I managed to make it nearly 30 times faster!
  Read more!