Iterator straw-man

[Bill Baxter]

Craig Black wrote:
> I do agree that using classes and interfaces to represent iterators is a bad 
> idea for performance reasons.  I also agree that I don't think it's 
> necessary to support raw pointers.
> 
> IMO iterators should be structs such that iteration can be performed as 
> follows:
> 
> for(auto i = container.begin(); i.isValid(); i.next())  write(i.value);
> 
> If I am not mistaken, this can already be done in D.  With foreach support 
> this would simplify to.
> 
> foreach(i; container)  write(i);

I haven't read Seans big long proposal yet, but I think the method that 
returns an iterator should not be called 'begin'.  I should be called 
'forward' or 'iterator' or 'iter' or 'forward_iterator' or something 
like that.

Then i would hope that all of the following would be possible:

    foreach(i; container.iter)  write(i);
    foreach(i; container.reverse_iter)  write(i);
    foreach(i; container.my_skip_every_prime_number_iter) write(i);

foreach(i; container) can look for the .iter (or opIterator, or whatever 
standard name is decided upon).

foreach_reverse(i; container) [shudder] can look for the .riter (or 
opIteratorReverse, or whatever).

--bb