std.string and std.algorithm: what to do?

[Derek Parnell]

On Thu, 14 May 2009 16:59:32 -0400, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

> I guess I understand the mentality of picking -1 or uint.max as a  
> reasonable "failure" return, but what I don't understand is why you would  
> do so when you could use the length of the string, which is useful for  
> many other purposes.  -1 or uint.max just is a failure, and needs to be  
> checked, it can't be used to do any slicing operations.

A problem with .length is that it requires the knowledge of the string for
it to be meaningful. If find() can return any integer, we can only know if
that integer represents WasFound or WasNotFound if we have the string in
context. 

Currently we can do this ...

    funcA( find(needle, haystack), xyzzy);

and 'funcA' doesn't need to know anything more about the 'haystack' to
work. If find/indexOf() can return any integer we would have to code ...

    funcA( indexOf(needle, haystack) != haystack.length ? uint.max : 0,
xyzzy);

(assuming that funcA is expecting uint.max to mean WasNotFound).

So there are really arguments for employing both methods. It just depends
on why you are trying to 'find' stuff.

-- 
Derek Parnell
Melbourne, Australia
skype: derek.j.parnell