Yes, that is correct. There are all kinds of gc-less containers implemented for D, including the standard library std.container.array that is much like C++ std:

Yes, that is correct. There are all kinds of gc-less containers implemented for D, including the standard library std.container.array that is much like C++ std::vector. The downside of those is that they are not entirely memory safe. EDIT: Even slices do not mandate using the GC. The GC will only collect arrays registered to it in the first place. If the slice was malloced, it is not registered and thus won't be collected. The built-in ~ operator allocates the new array with the GC though, so you have do something custom to concatenate slices in GC-free code.