Why foreach(c; someString) must yield dchar

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 08/20/2010 12:22 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Friday, August 20, 2010 09:44:26 Simen kjaeraas wrote:
>> Rainer Deyke<rainerd at eldwood.com>  wrote:
>>> On 8/19/2010 03:56, Jonathan Davis wrote:
>>>> The problem is that chars are not characters. They are UTF-8 code
>>>> units.
>>>
>>> So what?  You're acting like 'char' (and specifically 'char[]') is some
>>> sort of unique special case.  In reality, it's just one case of encoded
>>> data.  What about compressed data?  What about packed arrays of bits?
>>> What about other containers?
>>
>> First off, char, wchar, and dchar are special cases already - they're
>> basically byte, short, and int, but are treated somewhat differently.
>>
>> One possibility, which would make strings a less integrated part of the
>> language, is to make them simple range structs, and hide UTF-8/16
>> details in the implementation. If it were not for the fact that D touts
>> its UTF capabilities, and that this would make it a little less true,
>> and the fact that char/wchar/dchar are already treated specially, I
>> would support this idea.
>
> If you do that, you'd probably do something like
>
> struct String(C)
> {
>      C[] array;
>
>      dchar front() { size_t i = 0; return decod(a, i); }
>      dchar back()  { /* more complicated code*/ }
>      void popFront() { array.popFront(); }
>      void popBack()  { array.popBack(); }
>      bool empty()    { return array.empty; }
> }
>
> alias String(immutable char) string;

Grep std/ for byDchar.

Andrei