array of randomly generated names

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Fri, 15 Oct 2010 15:50:53 -0400, spir <denis.spir at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> A few questions raised by a single func.
>
> ===================
> alias char[] Text ;
>
> Text letters = ['a','b','c',...] ;
>
> Text[] nameSet (uint count , uint size) {
> 	/* set of count random names of size size */
> 	Text[] names ; names.length = count ;
> 	Text name ; name.length = size ;
> 	for (int i=0 ; i<count ; i++) {
> 		for (int j=0 ; j<size ; j++)
> 		    name[j] = letters[uniform(0u,26u)] ;
> 		names[i].length = size ;
> 		names[i][] = name ;
> 	}
> 	return names ;
> }
> ===================
>
> 1. In the  inner loop generating name, I have found neither a way to  
> feed directly ints into name, nore a way to cast ints to chars using to!  
> (also found no chr()). So, I had to list letters. But this wouldn't work  
> with a wide range of unicode chars... How to build name directly from  
> random ints?

Can't you just use addition?

i.e. i = 0-25 mapped to letters a-z is cast(char)('a' + i)

If you are going for unicode, I'd suggest using wchar or dchar (which  
could be directly cast from integers) to build the string, and then use  
to!(char[])(widename);

Finally, I'd suggest accepting a dchar[] letters as a third optional  
parameter in case someone wants names in a specific language.

-Steve