Why std.algorithm.sort can't be applied to char[]?

[Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Thu, 15 May 2014 11:37:07 -0400, monarch_dodra <monarchdodra at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> On Thursday, 15 May 2014 at 13:26:45 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer
> wrote:
>> On Wed, 14 May 2014 05:13:42 -0400, Jonathan M Davis via  
>> Digitalmars-d-learn <digitalmars-d-learn at puremagic.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 14 May 2014 08:27:45 +0000
>>> monarch_dodra via Digitalmars-d-learn
>>> <digitalmars-d-learn at puremagic.com> wrote:
>>>> As a matter of fact, the built in "sort" property does it.
>>>>
>>>> void main()
>>>> {
>>>>     char[] s = "éöeèûà".dup;
>>>>     s.sort;
>>>>     writeln(s);
>>>> }
>>>> //prints:
>>>> eàèéöû
>>>
>>> I'm surprised. I thought that one of Bearophile's favorite complaints  
>>> was that
>>> it didn't sort unicode properly (and hence one of the reasons that it  
>>> should
>>> be removed). Regardless, I do think that it should be removed.
>>
>> I can't believe this worked. I want to say that it's a freak accident  
>> for that set of characters. Looking in druntime, I don't see where the  
>> special case is.
>>
>> -Steve
>
> Must be a hell of a freak accident ;)
>
>       auto s = "é東öe京ûタèワà".dup;
>       writeln(s.sort);
>
> => eàèéöûタワ京東
>
> It's in rt/adi.d

Seriously, I fucking hate the file names in druntime.

I looked in qsort.d.

> extern (C) char[] _adSortChar(char[] a)
>
> It's basically: string=>dstring=>sort=>dstring=>string.

OK, that's what I would have expected. I don't think we should support  
this.

> BTW, the built in reverse also works with char[], and so does  
> std.algorithm.reverse (and it does it pretty cleverly too, might I say).

This is a different algorithm. Sort requires random-access swapping.  
Reverse does not.

> As far as I'm concerned, if we *can* do it in n.log(n), and somebody  
> provides the implementation, then there is no reason to not offer dchar  
> sorting for char[]/wchar.

I think there is nothing wrong with requiring the steps to be explicit. We  
should not hide such bloat behind sort.

-Steve