opCaret to complement opDollar when specifying slices

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Sat, 02 Jun 2012 07:49:16 -0400, Dario Schiavon  
<dario.schiavon at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I just read some old threads about opDollar and the wish to have it work  
> for non zero-based arrays, arrays with gaps, associative arrays with  
> non-numerical indices, and so on. It was suggested to define opDollar as  
> the end of the array rather than the length (and perhaps rename opDollar  
> to opEnd to reflect this interpretation), so that collection[someIndex  
> .. $] would consistently refer to a slice from someIndex to the end of  
> the collection (of course the keys must have a defined ordering for it  
> to make sense).
>
> I'm just thinking, if we want to generalize slices for those cases,  
> shouldn't we have a symmetrical operator for the first element of the  
> array? Since the $ sign was evidently chosen to parallel the regexp  
> syntax, why don't we add ^ to refer to the first element? This way,  
> collection[^ .. $] would slice the entire collection, just like  
> collection[].
>
> Until now, ^ is only used as a binary operator, so this addition  
> shouldn't lead to ambiguous syntax. It surely wouldn't be used as often  
> as the opDollar, so I understand if you oppose the idea, but it would at  
> least make the language a little more "complete".

I suggested this, and it was shot down rather pointedly by Walter (with  
not very convincing arguments I might add).  Probably not much chance of  
success.

http://forum.dlang.org/post/op.vco5zwhreav7ka@localhost.localdomain

-Steve