2542 – array casts behave differently at compile and runtime

This is related to casts of arrays not being documented:
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2494
The issue is that the following produce different results:
const short[] ct = cast(short[]) [cast(byte)1, 1]; // ct is [1, 1]
short[] rt = cast(short[]) [cast(byte)1, 1].dup; // rt is [ 257 ]
The runtime cast seems to be defined as 'reinterpret the data as an array of a different type, recompute the length' whereas the compile time cast seems to be 'convert each element to the other element type, keep length unchanged'.

You're right, this is a documentation issue. Casts of array literals are treated differently.

While you're at it, could you also document these casts for string literals?
short[] ct1 = cast(short[]) "\x01\x01"; // [ 257 ]
short[] ct2 = cast(short[]) [cast(char)1, 1]; // [1, 1]
even though both literals represent the same char[2] value.

So [cast(byte)1, 1] isn't a byte[], an int[] or anything like that, but of an internal 'array literal' type.
Then why is [cast(byte)1, 1].dup not also of this internal 'array literal' type?

Fixed DMD2.023 and DMD1.039