Should we add drop to Phobos?

[Martin Nowak]

I personally like immutable methods way better than a ref changing  
function like popFrontN.
As you pointed out writing str.find(";").drop(2).find(";").drop(2) is  
cleaner than writing this with popFrontN.

Drop will have issues for input ranges.

Adding a ref count parameter overload to let you know how many elements  
were dropped/not dropped seems too messy. No idea for that one.

The documentation should clearly state that this offers similar  
functionality to popFrontN but it's purpose
is to enable a different syntax so that people don't get completely  
confused.

martin

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 01:22:43 +0200, Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg at gmx.com>  
wrote:

> On Saturday, August 13, 2011 23:02 Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> [snip]
>> So, the question is: Is drop worth having in Phobos? It's common in
>> functional languages, and if you want to program in a more functional
>> style, it's of enormous benefit. We'll still have popFrontN regardless,  
>> so
>> the question is whether drop adds enough value to be worth having or
>> whether it's just too similar to popFrontN to be worth adding to the
>> standard library.
>>
>> Personally, I think that drop would be a _very_ useful function to have.
>> What do you think?
>
> Does anyone else have an opinion on this? It will be a lot easier to talk
> Andrei into having drop in Phobos if more than just 2 people respond.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis