How to collect "some" items of a range in an array?

[monkyyy]

On Monday, 6 January 2025 at 19:30:27 UTC, Renato wrote:
> Is there any Phobos function that collects "some" items of a 
> range into an array/slice?
> It's kind of embarrassing that I've been trying to find this 
> for hours now without success :(.
>
> I think I know how to write this myself (though writing generic 
> stuff on ranges is not exactly straightforward), but surely 
> there is something for this and I am somehow missing it (even 
> AI can't help me)?
>
> My use case is to parse a file format where a line is expected 
> to have 4 items. I am currently using `takeExactly(4)` but that 
> doesn't let me index on it, so I can only think of doing 
> inconvenient (and inefficient) stuff like `front, skip(1).front 
> ...` to avoid having to write my own `toArray` :D. I couldn't 
> even find a method to take 1 item and advance the range! Am I 
> just looking at the entirely wrong places (std.range, 
> std.algorithm.iteration)??
```
import std;
alias takearray(int i)=(r)=>r.take(i).staticArray!i;
unittest{
     iota(3).takearray!4.writeln;
     iota(5).takearray!4.writeln;
}
```