moveFront() and friends: Request for comment

[Pillsy]

dsimcha Wrote:
[...]
> I'd like any comments anyone might have on to what extent 
> arbitrarily expensive postblits should be considered in the 
> design of Phobos.

I agree with you: expensive post-blits just don't seem sufficiently
necessary in D to warp the design of the standard library around 
them, and have a distinctly anti-patternish feel to them. You have 
too many other options, like straight reference semantics, copy-on-
write, and (with immutability and GC) safely shared structure. 

The last can be an incredibly useful technique for reducing the 
cost of copying, because it allows you to treat an immutable 
reference type exactly like a value type. 

Cheers, 
Pillsy