RFC: naming for FrontTransversal and Transversal ranges

[Robert Jacques]

On Sat, 02 May 2009 10:18:41 -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu  
<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>> On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 6:25 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu
>>>  Matrix a, b, c; ... c = a; a += b;
>>>  Does the last operation mutate c as well?
>>  I said "assignments like a = b are rare" and you put one of those in  
>> your example.
>
> You said it and I don't buy it one femtosecond. Code does need to copy
> values around. It's a fundamental operation!

Andrei, he said that explicit assignments/copies of arrays/containers are  
rare in numeric computing, which I agree with. Just because it's a  
fundamental operation doesn't mean it gets used much is his (or I guess  
Numply's actually) specific applications. Also, disregarding/disbelieving  
a use case is not helpful to this discussion.

>> Yes, when you have an a=b anywhere you've got to pay attention and
>> make sure you didn't mean a=b.dup.
>
> That is terrible. Anywhere == a portion of the code far, far away.

No, he was talking about a local decision. i.e. Did I or didn't I mean to  
make a logical copy here?