VLERange: a range in between BidirectionalRange and RandomAccessRange

[Steven Wawryk]

On 19/01/11 02:40, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 1/18/11 1:58 AM, Steven Wawryk wrote:
>> On 18/01/11 16:46, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> On 1/17/11 9:48 PM, Michel Fortin wrote:
>>>> This makes me think of what I did with my XML parser after you made
>>>> code
>>>> points the element type for strings. Basically, the parser now uses
>>>> 'front' and 'popFront' whenever it needs to get the next code point,
>>>> but
>>>> most of the time it uses 'frontUnit' and 'popFrontUnit' instead
>>>> (which I
>>>> had to add) when testing for or skipping an ASCII character is
>>>> sufficient. This way I avoid a lot of unnecessary decoding of code
>>>> points.
>>>>
>>>> For this to work, the same range must let you skip either a unit or a
>>>> code point. If I were using a separate range with a call to toDchar or
>>>> toCodeUnit (or toGrapheme if I needed to check graphemes), it wouldn't
>>>> have helped much because the new range would essentially become a new
>>>> slice independent of the original, so you can't interleave "I want to
>>>> advance by one unit" with "I want to advance by one code point".
>>>>
>>>> So perhaps the best interface for strings would be to provide multiple
>>>> range-like interfaces that you can use at the level you want.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but I thought I should at least
>>>> share my experience.
>>>
>>> Very insightful. Thanks for sharing. Code it up and make a solid
>>> proposal!
>>>
>>> Andrei
>>
>> How does this differ from Steve Schveighoffer's string_t, subtract the
>> indexing and slicing of code-points, plus a bidirectional grapheme range?
>
> There's no string, only range...

Which is exactly what I asked you about.  I understand that you must be 
very busy,  But how do I get you to look at the actual technical content 
of something?  Is there something in the way I phrase thing that you 
dismiss my introductory motivation without looking into the content?

I don't mean this as a criticism.  I really want to know because I'm 
considering a proposal on a different topic but wasn't sure it's worth 
it as there seems to be a barrier to getting things considered.