Generalize .ptr to RawPtr ranges?

[Brad Anderson via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 5 October 2015 at 10:06:04 UTC, Dmitry Olshansky wrote:
> Just a random idea - slices have .ptr and therefor have a bunch 
> of advantages such as SSE optimized copy routine.
>
> Once I wrap a slice in something (anything) it looses ALL of 
> that.
> Now for instance std.container.Array!int.Range can easily 
> provide .ptr property, together with .length it would allow us 
> to use memcpy etc.
>
> Maybe generalize to isRandomAccessRange!Range + 
> hasRawPtr!Range, where hasRawPtr!(Range) would test for 
> compatible .ptr and .length.
>
> The benefit compared to manually slicing the .ptr and using 
> that, then propagating the change back to the original range is 
> that:
> 	- it's error prone
> 	- awkwardly replicated at each call site
>
> So it would be much better to retain safe range interface and 
> encapsulate speed-hacks inside of the algorithms.
>
> Thoughts?

Somewhat related, C++17 is going to add the concept of Contiguous 
Iterators. 
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2014/n3884.pdf