phobos and splitting things... but not with whitespace.

[simendsjo]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2012 17:19:59 +0200, Chad J  
<chadjoan at __spam.is.bad__gmail.com> wrote:
> http://dlang.org/phobos/std_array.html#splitter

> The first thing I don't understand is why splitter is in /std.array/ and  
> yet only works on /strings/.  It is defined > in terms of whitespace,  
> and I don't understand how whitespace is well-defined for things besides  
> text.  Why wouldn't > it be in std.string?

See http://dlang.org/phobos/std_algorithm.html#splitter

> I would expect these functions to exist:
> auto getHead(C)(C[] s, C[] delim, ref C[] tail);
> auto getHead(C)(C[] s, C[] delim);
> auto getTail(C)(C[] s, C[] delim);

As head is simply splitter(..)[0] and tail splitter(...)[1..$], extra  
functions could be implemented much like this

@property T head(T[] arr) { return arr.front; }
@property T[] tail(T[] arr) { return arr[1..$]; }

..and UFCS takes care of the rest:
auto fields = splitter(...);
auto head = fields.head;
auto tail = fields.tail;