Weird issue with std.range.iota.length

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 14 February 2016 at 10:59:41 UTC, w0rp wrote:
> Maybe I'm missing something, but can't the length just be 
> size_t? I doubt there is much you could do with code which 
> generates finite sequences larger than the addressable memory 
> space, aside from very abstract and inefficient mathematical 
> calculations which skip over elements. iota would probably work 
> better with size_t in most cases, and if you really well and 
> truly need something which generates finite sequences of 
> integers larger than the addressable memory space, you can 
> always just write your own version.

Yeah. It would be easy enough to just make iota size_t and then 
have it check the actual length of the range when it's called to 
make sure that it's not larger than will fit in size_t (and 
presumably throw a RangeError if the number of elements is too 
large). Anyone who really wants to have a range with more than 
size_t.max elements can write their own thing. It's not like it's 
going to work nicely with other ranges anyway - at least not as 
long as it defines length.

- Jonathan M Davis