GSoC: Containers and Ranges

[Christian Hotz-Behofsits]

Yes, this helped a lot! I read the article from Andrei Alexandrescu
first and then yours - all in all I have a good overview now.

thx

2011/4/3 Ishan Thilina <ishanthilina at gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> D's Ranges are somewhat like iterators in C++.But only interface is compared to
> find out what kind of a range this is ( I think this is called duck typing, not
> sure though).There are mainly 4 kinds of ranges.
>
> One passs range
>
> Forward range
>
> Double ended range
>
> Random access range
>
> If I show you the inheritance hierarchy( again, this is not true inheritance :) ),
>
> One pass range<-- Forward range<-- Random access range
>
>
> One pass range:
> Can get a single element from the container. Has three methods.
>
> bool empty() --> Checks to see whether the current element that it's pointing to
> is empty( or has been already accessed).
>
> void popFront()--> Points to the next element in the container
>
> Ref(T) front()--> Returns a reference to the current element that the range points to.
>
> Forward range:
> Has the same methods as the one pass range but also has an additional method "
> ForwardRange save()". This method returns an exact copy of the range.
>
> Double ended range:
>
> Similar to One pass range, but can access data from the back of the container
> too.This has the same methods of One pass range and also has these additional methods.
>
> Ref(T) back()
> void popBack()
>
> ( you can guess what they do, can't you ? ;) )
>
> Random access range:
>
> As the name suggests provides random access to elements of the container( Should
> be in constant time I guess). Has these additional methods with respect to Forward
> ranges.
>
> Ref(T) at(int i)--> Fetches an element at the given index i.
> RandomAccessRange slice(int i, int j)--> Returns a random access range which
> points to a sub range lying between indexes i and j.
>
> Hope this helps :)
>