Should formattedWrite take the outputrange by ref?

[monarch_dodra]

On Saturday, 18 January 2014 at 23:06:42 UTC, Tobias Pankrath 
wrote:
> I actually didn't think that a ptr (to output range) would 
> work. This way we can have best of both worlds and I'm happy 
> with it.

A fun fact is that since "." notation works with pointers, more 
often than not, if "T" verifies some trait "isOutputRange", more 
often than not, so will "T*".

But this is more of a by-product than an actual rule, and, as a 
rule of thumb, may not be something you want to rely on in a 
general sense. Limitations include:

Type checking: If "R" is a random access range, "R*" will only be 
an input range, because "p.save" will return an "R", and not an 
"R*" :/

Also, it is limited to member functions, and not generic UFCS: 
For example, while in the general sense, "R is input range" => 
"R* is input range", this will fail for "T[]*", because slices 
have a non-member popFront, so "p.popFront()" will not actually 
match a function, and "T[]*" will fail the input range validation 
:/

So, my conclusion, "*" might be a workable solution. But simply 
taking by ref would be cleaner, and make more sense as a whole.