std.algorithm's remove

[bearophile]

maarten van damme:

> Is there any way I could've known this?

For me it was "obvious" even before reading the documentation 
that a remove function is meant to be in-place. But of course you 
could have different ideas.


> (apart from reading the documentation on every single
> trivial function in the std library?)

Before using every function from the standard library you have to 
read its documentation, this is sure. You can not assume its 
behavour to be exactly the same you hope it to have. This is true 
for languages as Python too.

Regarding your very quickly written D code, I suggest to decrease 
the indents size, put a space around operators, put 
immutable/const to everything that doesn't need to change (unless 
there are problems doing so). I also suggest to use UFCS chains, 
because they are more readable for this kind of code. Instead of 
the readln()[0..$-1] you could chomp, strip or do not retain 
newlines. Instead of array(splitter) it's simpler to just split. 
Instead of chain.length==0 it's better to use empty. The foreach 
usually doesn't need a type, and probably your for loop could 
written as a better foreach. I also suggest to add contracts to 
your code. Instead of returning a "can't be solved", probably 
there are stronger typed solutions, like using an Algebraic or 
Nullable.

Bye,
bearophile