On Sunday, 3 August 2025 at 15:31:34 UTC, Paul Backus wrote:
The second one comes from C, where "object" refers to any value stored in memory. This kind of "object" is defined in the ["Object Model" section][2] of the language specification, and is mostly of interest to those writing low-level code that deals directly with memory allocation.
Yes, that's the term of art. It's been a long time since I read anything related to C++, but back in the days when I did, 'object' was commonly used colloquially to refer to class and struct instances. Everything else was just a value.
I have never seen any D programmer use "object" to mean "struct or class instance."
Then I guess you missed my post above :-) I've been calling D struct and class instances 'objects' since 2003. It's the term I picked up from Java and C++ articles, books, and forums in the years before I found D.
The standard term for grouping together structs and classes is ["aggregate,"][4] as in "aggregate type" or "aggregate instance."
Classes and structs are aggregates because they group together (aggregate) variables and fields. That's got nothing to do with instances of either.
