Improving std.algorithm.find

[Philippe Sigaud]

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 06:19, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
*****
I think that the problem with find() is not so much find() but it's
documentation.
In all honesty, anything with a return type like FindResult!(Range, Ranges)
is
going to scare people off.
*****

What should be done (in a perfect world) is to have a simplified signature
that can become the complete signature on a click

auto find!()(haystack, needles)  =>  FindResult!(etc.  ...
the empty !() being a cue that it's a template function and that there is
more to it that meets the eye.

(edit: crap, you said it afterwards. I should not reply hours after first
reading a message)

*****
If anything, I've been more interested in canFind() and until() being made
to
match up with find(). I'd like to be able to give them both pretty much the
same
arguments and then get the bool from canFind() and the range that find()
would
have walked over in the case of until(). A function which gave you both the
range that until() would have given you as well as the one which find()
would
have given you would be nice as well. I previously opened a bug with
thoughts
along those lines: http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3888
*****

Ah, these are called takeWhile, dropWhile and span, in Haskell and other
sequence-heavy languages.
Or splitBy, cutAt, etc. Quite handy to have, I agree std.algorithm should
have them. But then, it's huge module already.


*****
In any case, I think that find() itself is more or less fine from a usage
standpoint. It's the docs that need help. The other thing would
be to add a lot more examples. That would be a big boon for a lot of
std.algorithm functions. They're not necessarily hard to use, and the
examples
show it much more clearly than the signatures often do.
*****

I sometimes dream of a complement to Phobos that would demonstrate its use,
either by providing lots of examples for each function or by taking a module
and tackling a task with it. Obviously, as both a complement to Phobos and a
way to demo-nstrate D, it should be called Deimos, the second moon of Mars,
Phobos' sibling.

Now, the Deimos Project, that's some cool name, if I may say so.

But I guess the wiki already does this.

Philippe
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