Are iterators and ranges going to co-exist?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Wednesday, July 21, 2010 14:39:38 Peter Alexander wrote:
> I also find it unintuitive to write insertBefore(Range). Why is it
> asking me for a range when it's going to ignore everything but the first
> element? Why can't I just pass in the single position I want to insert
> before? The same applies for insertAfter.

Well, considering that any function that you'd be dealing with at this point 
would give you a range, it's quite natural that what you'd have to pass to 
insertBefore() would be a range. And really, that's all you need anyway. The 
first element of the range is what you'd have had an iterator for anyway, so 
you're really doing the same thing. It's just that you have a whole range 
instead of the single iterator.

Granted, it does seem a little funny to have whole ranges for this, but it works 
just fine, and trying to mix iterators into phobos will just make it more 
complicated, and cause concerns for when iterators should be used vs when ranges 
should be used, as well as how to convert from one to the other.

It may be that we need to find a way to extend the functionality of ranges such 
that some of the more awkward cases are less awkward, but ranges work, and they 
generally work very well. It just requires thinking about things a bit 
differently.

- Jonathan M Davis