foreach thoughts

[bearophile]

Manu:

> So, the last few days, 2 things have been coming up constantly.
>
> foreach is like, the best thing about D. But I often get caught 
> by 2 little
> details that result in my having to create a bunch more visual 
> noise.

I am against the suggested changes, because they are too much 
not-orthogonal.

One of the few things that I'd like to change in foreach is 
support for anonymous loops:  foreach(;0..10)

I'd like an enumerate() in Phobos.

I think the current tuple unpacking in foreach is a very limited 
and partially broken feature that should be deprecated as soon as 
possible (and later replaced with something better and more 
general).

I think the ! for algorithms and ranges add noise, sometimes I 
forget them, and I'd like to not need them, but I think they are 
not going away. So what I'd like are more specific and more clean 
error messages when I forget them.

As D programs use more and more algorithm UFCS chains, D 
compilers will need to optimize that kind of code better, adding 
specific high-level and mid-level optimizations (rewrite rules, 
deforestations, etc).

Bye,
bearophile