data-oriented struct abstraction ?

[short2cave via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Saturday, 30 May 2015 at 14:23:37 UTC, Marc Schütz wrote:
> Something like this?
>
>     struct S {
>        static int[] a_;
>        static float[] b_;
>        const size_t idx;
>        @property ref int   a() { return a_[idx]; }
>        @property ref float b() { return b_[idx]; }
>        void opAssign(const S other) {
>            a_[idx] = a_[other.idx];
>            b_[idx] = b_[other.idx];
>        }
>        // opSliceAssign() ...
>     }
>
>     // ... initialize S.a_ and S.b_ here ...
>     auto s = S(200); // 200th entry
>     writefln("a = %s, b = %s", s.a, s.b);
>
> You can then simply iterate over S.a_ directly. With some UDA 
> and mixin template magic, the accessors can be generated 
> automatically.
>
> Of course, depending on what you're actually trying to do with 
> it, other abstractions may be more useful to support your 
> typical access patterns.

Yes, kind of. The template should be able to generate the 
accessors using the fields of the struct passed as template 
argument. But also a special accessor wich returns all the items 
accessors, in a structured way:


---
struct Model
{
    uint a, b;
}

template Structured(T)
{
     alias Structured = ...;
}
---

allowing things like:
---
Structured!Model sm;

sm[0].a = 0;
sm[0].b = 0;
auto item = sm[0];
sm.a = 0;
sm.pushBack;
auto item = sm.back;
sm.length += 1,
---
etc.