Major performance problem with std.array.front()

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 3/9/14, 10:34 AM, Peter Alexander wrote:
> If we assume strings are normalized then substring search, equality
> testing, sorting all work the same with either code units or code points.

But others such as edit distance or equal(some_string, some_wstring) 
will not.

>>> If you don't care about normalization then by code unit is just as good
>>> as by code point, but you don't need to specialise everywhere in Phobos.
>>>
>>> AFAIK, there is only one exception, stuff like s.all!(c => c == 'é'),
>>> but as Vladimir correctly points out: (a) by code point, this is still
>>> broken in the face of normalization, and (b) are there any real
>>> applications that search a string for a specific non-ASCII character?
>>
>> What happened to counting characters and such?
>
> I can't think of any case where you would want to count characters.

wc

(Generally: I've always been very very very doubtful about arguments 
that start with "I can't think of..." because I've historically tried 
them so many times, and with terrible results.)


Andrei