inplace_merge, nWayUnion

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 8/30/10 14:06 PDT, bearophile wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu:
>> My point is you need to understand that you are making contradictory
>> requests.
>
> I understand your point, but I think you are wrong. I think that the usage and semantics of a nWayUnion(r1, r2, ...) are simple to understand and use (regardless the complexity of its signature).
>
> You use it as:
> foreach (x; nWayUnion(r1, r2))
> Or as:
> array(nWayUnion(r1, r2, r3))
> etc. This is a natural enough.
>
> Bye,
> bearophile

I'd be indeed wrong to claim that. What I was saying is that in a past 
bug report you complained that find() is too hard to understand. That 
was because find() supported things like heterogeneous ranges and 
finding more things than one in a single-pass manner. Making nWayUnion 
accept heterogeneous ranges would no doubt increase its implementation 
complexity - probably worth it given the increased leverage. All I'm 
saying is, please remember that solutions that are at the same time 
simpler and more general are in short supply.

Andrei