I like D

[Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d]

Recently, while updating a D utility I wrote to process a binary log 
file into a tab-separated text file, I found a nice use for ranges.

So I have N columns, separated by tabs. The header looks like this:

"TIME\tCOL1\tCOL2\t..."

With about 30 or 40 columns.

The first output is a line like this:

03/24/2015 12:34:56\t-\t-\t-\t...

to designate the start of the log file. In my code, I had, in addition 
to printing the time, a line like this:

output.writeln("\t-\t-\t-\t-...");

So adding new columns, I now had to add an appropriate number of "\t-" 
to this output. In this update, I also decided to print one of these 
whenever the log "restarts", so now I would have multiple lines like 
this to maintain. How annoying. Luckily I was using D :)

New code:

immutable nfields = header.count('\t');
...
output.writeln(cycle("\t-").take(2 * nfields));

Super-win, now I only ever have to update the original column list.

Little things like this are what make me love D.

-Steve