Enhancing foreach

[ixid]

On Wednesday, 9 January 2013 at 23:15:10 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 09, 2013 05:38:16 ixid wrote:
>> A very minor change that would be elegant and easy for 
>> beginners:
>> 
>> foreach(i;5)
>> //stuff
>> 
>> Allowing just a single number to mean the end point and a 
>> default
>> starting point of zero is assumed, just as with iota it's
>> possible to write it iota(5) or even 5.iota, it assumes unless
>> otherwise specified that you mean 0 to be the starting point.
>> Would this be a reasonable enhancement request for me to make 
>> or
>> does it collide with something?
>
> I would argue that the mistake is that iota(5) works. That's 
> not at all clear,
> and
>
> foreach(i; 5)
>  //stuff
>
> is no better. Regardless, all such an enhancement would do is 
> save you a
> little bit of typing. It adds no actual functionality to the 
> language, so I
> _really_ don't think that it makes sense to implement anything 
> like that.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

Regardless of this particular suggestion's value, I think you're 
wrong to dismiss readable terseness and saving typing as 
mattering, it's one of D's advantages over C++ that it makes a 
lot of things far easier to do and understand because they're not 
a horrid mess.