Idea: swap with multiple arguments

[Xinok via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 23 May 2016 at 20:01:08 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> ...

I wish to make a different point which is more general regarding 
ideas like these. I see a lot of proposals to add this or that to 
the standard library and a lot of debate pursues. One point I've 
never seen mentioned though is that these ideas would probably 
have limited usage in the real world. I think a good rule of 
thumb to consider is that the standard library should be *general 
purpose* and mostly contain common functionality, with some 
exceptions of course. We should consider whether these things 
will actually see common usage or just add bloat to the standard 
library. Also consider that once it's incorporated into Phobos, 
the responsibility of maintaining that code falls on the 
community rather than those few individuals who actually desire 
that functionality.

I'm sure this feature has some useful application in some 
specific domain but I question it's value in the community at 
large. I personally see no value in having a swap which can 
rotate three or more arguments to the left, or however we may 
choose to incorporate this functionality. On the other hand, I 
use swap() with two arguments all the time; it's very common 
functionality that most of us has likely used at least a few 
times.



BTW, Phobos already has a function called bringToFront which can 
rotate/roll ranges but the interface is a bit different compared 
to other languages.

     
https://dlang.org/phobos/std_algorithm_mutation.html#.bringToFront