Arrays are sufficient for ArrayLists? Really??

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 05/16/2011 04:54 AM, Mehrdad wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I posted this question on StackOverflow about D:
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6015008/how-to-delete-an-element-
> from-an-array-in-d
>
> and the answers are quite surprising to me.
>
> Are arrays really supposed to be substitutes for array lists if we
> can't remove anything from them? It seems to me like that's a really
> basic feature we're missing here... it's really annoying whenever I
> find out that each of my arrays needs its own "counter" variable,
> even though it already has a length and a capacity.
>
> Doesn't that mean we still need an ArrayList(T) type, as powerful as
> arrays are supposed to be in D?

As has been mentioned, std.algorithm.remove can be of help. You may want 
to look at three of its capabilities in particular: (a) remove multiple 
offsets in one pass, e.g. remove(a, 0, 4) removes the first and fifth 
element, (b) you can remove subranges, e.g. remove(a, tuple(1, 3)) 
removes the second through fourth element, and (c) if you don't care 
about the order in which elements are left after removal you may want to 
look into unstable remove, which does considerably less work.


Andrei