const main args?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Friday, August 12, 2011 16:04 Adam Ruppe wrote:
> Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > const(T)[] maybe,
> > but as soon as you use in, you can't use any range functions.
> 
> That is, to me, the biggest problem with range functions and
> something that should be fixed.
> 
> There's no defense for it aside from being the status quo. It's just a
> shortcoming of the current implementation, not a principled limitation.

If it can be fixed so that a slice of a const/immutable range is tail-const, 
then they'll be in the same boat as static arrays and at least be usable with 
range-based functions when you slice them, but at this point, the only way to 
make it so that you could simply pass them without slicing them is if you 
overloaded _every_ range-based functions on arrays. And since you're going to 
have to slice containers to pass them to range-based functions anyway (dynamic 
arrays are actually kind of weird in that they can be passed directly to 
range-based functions without slicing them - it's just that they're the most 
common used of ranges and therefore what we're most used to). So, I don't 
think that it's unreasonable to require that static arrays and const or 
immutable dynamic arrays be sliced to be used with range-based functions. But 
until it's fixed so that slices of a dynamic range are tail-const/tail-
immutable instead of exactly the same type, that doesn't work with const or 
immutable dynamic arrays, which definitely sucks. But if that can be fixed, I 
think that the situation will then be fairly reasonable.

- Jonathan M Davis