Nifty chaining

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:10:53 -0400, Peter Alexander  
<peter.alexander.au at gmail.com> wrote:

> I must be missing something, because I don't really see the need
> for this at all.
>
> Why not just return the number of items added, and forget about
> chaining? If you're worried about having to type the container's
> identifier in over and over again, just use with(c) {...}, and if
> you want to chain together multiple different ranges, just use
> std.range.chain.

This works also.  It depends on your preference for style.

I personally find this much more pleasant:

auto numAdded = lengthChain(a).add(1,2,3).add(b).add(c[1..3]).delta;

than:

int numAdded = void;
with(a)
{
   auto olength = length;
   add(1,2,3);
   add(b);
   add(c[1..3]);
   numAdded = length - olength;
}

But you might not.

> Is there any use case where these don't suffice?

Achieving it all with a single expression.  You might not care whether  
that's possible, but I personally like it better.  Whether it achieves  
much more than style points, I don't know.  I'm guessing it might add a  
bit of bloat.

-Steve