[Issue 18699] New: D's builtin arrays could allow a more generic opBinaryAssign with range support

[d-bugmail at puremagic.com]

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18699

          Issue ID: 18699
           Summary: D's builtin arrays could allow a more generic
                    opBinaryAssign with range support
           Product: D
           Version: D2
          Hardware: All
                OS: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P1
         Component: dmd
          Assignee: nobody at puremagic.com
          Reporter: greensunny12 at gmail.com

(from https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13797 where it was proposed to
add a new Phobos function for this)

tl;dr: appending an array to an array works fine today:

---
int[] arr;
arr ~= [0, 1, 2];
---

So I don't see any reason why the compiler couldn't be improved to accept this
too:

---
int[] arr;
arr ~= 3.iota;
---

Custom data types can already do this with operator overloading, but this is
not possible for built-in arrays.
The lowering should be trivial as D already allows ranges for `foreach`:

---
int[] arr;
foreach (e; 3.iota)
    arr ~= e;
---

--