opCaret to complement opDollar when specifying slices

[Mehrdad]

On Monday, 4 June 2012 at 19:55:49 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
wrote:
> On Sat, 02 Jun 2012 07:49:16 -0400, Dario Schiavon 
> <dario.schiavon at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I just read some old threads about opDollar and the wish to 
>> have it work for non zero-based arrays, arrays with gaps, 
>> associative arrays with non-numerical indices, and so on. It 
>> was suggested to define opDollar as the end of the array 
>> rather than the length (and perhaps rename opDollar to opEnd 
>> to reflect this interpretation), so that collection[someIndex 
>> .. $] would consistently refer to a slice from someIndex to 
>> the end of the collection (of course the keys must have a 
>> defined ordering for it to make sense).
>>
>> I'm just thinking, if we want to generalize slices for those 
>> cases, shouldn't we have a symmetrical operator for the first 
>> element of the array? Since the $ sign was evidently chosen to 
>> parallel the regexp syntax, why don't we add ^ to refer to the 
>> first element? This way, collection[^ .. $] would slice the 
>> entire collection, just like collection[].
>>
>> Until now, ^ is only used as a binary operator, so this 
>> addition shouldn't lead to ambiguous syntax. It surely 
>> wouldn't be used as often as the opDollar, so I understand if 
>> you oppose the idea, but it would at least make the language a 
>> little more "complete".
>
> I suggested this, and it was shot down rather pointedly by 
> Walter (with not very convincing arguments I might add).  
> Probably not much chance of success.
>
> http://forum.dlang.org/post/op.vco5zwhreav7ka@localhost.localdomain
>
> -Steve

Can you use "null"?