What features of D are you using now which you thought you'd never goint to use?

[monarch_dodra]

On Sunday, 23 June 2013 at 14:47:17 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> On 6/23/13 7:39 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Again, we can make things work by introducing a primitive for
>> bidirectional ranges:
>>
>> R before(R r1, R r2);
>>
>> Assuming r2 is reachable from r1, returns the portion of r1 
>> that lies
>> before r2. (Definition: a range r2 is reachable from another 
>> range r1 if
>> calling r1.popFront() repeatedly will at some point make 
>> r1.front and
>> r2.front refer to the same value.)
>
> The question is, should we add this primitive? There's 
> discussion on adding ranges to C++, and discussion inevitably 
> reaches an impasse when it gets to this particular matter.
>
> I personally think we should and am amazed that we made it so 
> far without that primitive. However, unlike others, I don't 
> think it's an essential matter. Some C++ people tend to be 
> apprehensive when they figure they can do something with 
> iterators that's not doable with ranges.
>
> Andrei

Just for the record (because I'm the one that usually brings this 
up), I think ranges are a big win overall. I just find it 
frustrating every time the "always shrink never grow" problem 
gets in my way of writing simple and efficient algorithms.

"before" might work, but it would also introduce a new primitve, 
as well as a new trait ("isSpliceable?"). There is a real gain to 
cost ratio, which I'm not sure is worth it. The semantics for it 
would also be kind of complicated: you'd have "before", "after", 
"beforeIncluding", "merge"...

I'm wondering if something along the lines of an "iterable" range 
might not be much more simple? Probably not :(