Removal of implicit variable "length"

[Bradley Smith]

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> Have you heard of $ ?
> 
> bar = foo[0 .. $];

I did notice the mention of "$" in the old newsgroup thread. However, I 
can't find any official documentation on it.


> Additionally, try turning on warnings for your original code, and you'll 
> notice you get one.

Thanks for pointing out the warnings. I wasn't aware of that warning. 
Because libraries often cause many warnings, I don't regularly have 
warning turned on.


> How about things like
> 
> int[] x = ALongClassName.AnotherClassName.aNonTrivialOperation()[1 .. $];
> 
> It's certainly nice to have a shortcut in cases like this, when typing out 
> the original expression is not only prohibitively long, but could possibly 
> waste performance re-evaluating the reference to the array. 
> 

Why not the following?

int[] ref = ALongClassName.AnotherClassName.aNonTrivialOperation();
int[] x = ref[1 .. ref.length];

Or perhaps?

int[] x = ALongClassName.AnotherClassName.aNonTrivialOperation();
x = x[1 .. x.length];

Will use of "$" be faster than using a local reference?

Unless there is a reason not to create a local reference to an array, I 
don't think either "length" or "$" are necessary. At least "$" shouldn't 
cause programming errors, but it does make the language more complex.

Thanks,
   Bradley