Iterators Must Go

[dsimcha]

== Quote from Rainer Deyke (rainerd at eldwood.com)'s article
> Although I like ranges, it looks to me like there are a couple of
> operations that would difficult to implement without iterators or some
> other way to specify a specific position in a range.
> Finding and erasing an element:
>   list.erase(find(list.begin(), list.end(), e));

What's wrong with this?  Since list owns its range representation, it can know the
implementation details.  For a linked list, this will probably be just a pair of
pointers under the hood anyhow.  In other words, it's internally still an
iterator, just prettier looking.

> Splitting a container on a position:
>   iter = find(list.begin(), list.end(), e);
>   do_something_with(list.begin(), iter);
>   do_something_else_with(iter, list.end());

This one is legit, as far as I can tell.  On the other hand, although it's
awkward, you could do something like:

Range myRange1;
auto myRange2 = find(myRange1, e);
struct PairOfRanges {
    Range myRange1, myRange2;

    auto front() {
        return myRange1.front;
    }

    bool empty() {
        return myRange1 == myRange2;
    }

    void popFront() {
        myRange1.popFront;
    }
}

> Inserting into a container at a position:
>   iter = find(list.begin(), list.end(), e);
>   list.insert(iter, array.begin(), array.end());

Same as erasing.

> Constructing a range from two independent position:
>   iter1 = find(list.begin(), list.end(), e1);
>   iter2 = rfind(list.begin(), list.end(), e2);
>   do_something_with(iter1, iter2);

Assuming find() works by popping elements off the front of the range until it
finds what it's looking for, and then returning that, and rfind() does the same
thing but from the back, just do something like:

Range myRange = find(list, e1);
myRange = rfind(myRange, e2);
do_something_with(myRange);