RFC on range design for D2

[Sergey Gromov]

Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "Bill Baxter" wrote
> > I think one thing to consider is what it will take to make a new
> > container support and "play nice" with the regime proposed.  This
> > touches on Andrei's point about being hard pressed to think of generic
> > algorithms to run on an HMM, too.
> >
> > The first question is who do you want to "play nice" with?  If you're
> > going to be writing functions specifically for that container, then
> > you don't really have to play nice with anyone.  Your container just
> > needs to have the operations necessary to support those functions.
> 
> Bill, thanks so much for explaining it like this, I really agree with what 
> you say.  My concern is that iterator is going to become a 'bad word' and 
> considered a flawed design.
> 
> But you are right, there is no need for iterators to be allowed for 
> std.algorithm, I totally agree with that, I just assumed Andrei meant 
> iterators would be discouraged for everything, including general use as 
> pointers into container objects.  If that is not the case, then I 
> wholeheartedly agree that algorithms should be restricted to ranges, and 
> iterators should be used only in container operations.

If you ask me, I think iterators AKA pointers into containers should be 
discouraged from SafeD.  If you don't care about SafeD you may use 
whatever you like.  Most library interfaces want to be SafeD to make 
user's life easier but few care about the library internals as long as 
they work.