Making all strings UTF ranges has some risk of WTF

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

ZY Zhou wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:
>> What can be done about that? I see a number of solutions:
>>
>> (a) Do not operate the change at all.
>>
>> (b) Operate the change and mention that in range algorithms you should 
>> check hasLength and only then use "length" under the assumption that it 
>> really means "elements count".
>>
>> (c) Deprecate the name .length for UTF-8 and UTF-16 strings, and define 
>> a different name for that. Any other name (codeUnits, codes etc.) would 
>> do. The entire point is to not make algorithms believe strings have a 
>> .length property.
>>
>> (d) Have std.range define a distinct property called e.g. "count" and 
>> then specialize it appropriately. Then change all references to .length 
>> in std.algorithm and elsewhere to .count.
>>
>> What would you do? Any ideas are welcome.
>>
>> Andrei
> 
> I choose (b)

Perfect. Then you'll be glad to know that I changed all of Phobos to 
support it. All unittests pass now, but I suspect there are a couple of 
bugs left.

The change will be part of the next release. I'll commit during the 
weekend. This is a very exciting development, I was very unhappy about 
the interaction between std.algorithm and strings.


Andrei