Enhancing foreach

[Peter Summerland]

On Thursday, 10 January 2013 at 02:04:57 UTC, ixid wrote:
> 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.

I don't think Jonathan was (merely) dismissing readable terseness 
and saving typing. IMO he had more pertinent reasons why

foreach(i; 0 .. 5)
{}

is very nice, *as is*.