Get rid of isInfinite()?

[Mehrdad]

On Monday, 25 June 2012 at 17:26:23 UTC, Mehrdad wrote:
> I feel like isInfinite is useless for typical cases... the only 
> "infinite" (perhaps I should call it "unbounded" instead?) 
> range I've ever realistically come across is a stream, like 
> console input or a network stream.
>
> Of course, isInfinite doesn't make any sense for any type of 
> wrapper around console input -- is it true or false?
> You can't tell, because it depends on whether the input is 
> redirected.
> If the console input was redirected, then it would be finite, 
> with a certain length (the length of the file).
> If not, then it would be infinite (er, unbounded).
>
> So IMHO, we should deprecate isInfinite entirely, and instead 
> rely on length being size_t.max.
>
> Not only would it make more sense, but it would make it 
> possible to create a random-access wrapper around an input 
> range (like console input), which lazily fetches its data.
> Then you can work with console input like a regular string!

This also prompts another issue:
The length of a range should be a long, not size_t.

Otherwise there's no way we could possibly replace streams with 
ranges. 32-bit systems have LOTS of common streams that are over 
2^32 bytes (e.g. DVD images, partition images, large movies, 
etc.).