range and algorithm-related stuff

[bearophile]

Andrei Alexandrescu:

> You mean the libs in my signature? Sure. :o)

:-]


> I like frequency a 
> lot, would be very useful for my NLP code (although probably I'd replace 
> it with counts and let the user normalize).

It doesn't perform a normalization (I can add to it few more functionalities can be added, but not this one), I'll improve its documentation.


> Also, signature can also distinguish rather easily between lazy and eager.

Well, if you are using an IDE that's easy. Otherwise you may need your memory or a manual.


Several of my lazy functions are inspired by:
http://docs.python.org/library/itertools.html

I don't like to show people programs that require my large dlibs to run, so I hope 80-90+% of my dlibs will be obsolete in D2.

D2 supports immutable data structures, so the D Std lib may gain some immutable data structures, like finger trees, etc.

Multi-threading, pure functions, immutable data structures, and lazy computations are forms of computation quite different from the usual ones done in C. I am sure the current D2 Std lib is using only a small part of the potential usages of such programming styles :-) I think some of such usages have yet to be invented (when C++ developers have added templates to C++ surely they didn't know all the weird and creative usages of them used for example in Blitz++ or Boost).

Seeing the work of Walter, your work here, and the community in this newsgroup, and on the other hand seeing how a significant percentage of computer science is done in academy, and what it produces, I'd say that there's more innovation and creativity here :-) Lot of CS is out of the world, not doing useful things, and sometimes not even much intelligent.
Yet, I know many smart folks working in CS in academy, and I think the design of D2 may be improved by some "hard" thinking done by that researchers. It's a pity there are so little communication between the two groups.

Bye,
bearophile