[phobos] std.array.ilength

[David Simcha]

Can you elaborate on why?  Unsigned seems like the perfect type for an array
length.

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 9:48 AM, Don Clugston <dclugston at googlemail.com>wrote:

> On 17 February 2011 14:59, David Simcha <dsimcha at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hey guys,
> >
> > Kagamin just came up with a simple but great idea to mitigate the
> pedantic
> > nature of 64-bit to 32-bit integer conversions in cases where using
> size_t
> > doesn't cut it.  Examples are storing arrays of indices into other
> arrays,
> > where using size_t would be a colossal waste of space if it's safe to
> assume
> > none of the arrays will be billions of elements long.
> >
> > int ilength(T)(T[] arr) {
> >    assert(arr.length <= int.max);
> >    return cast(int) arr.length;
> > }
> >
> > Usage:
> >
> > int[] indices;
> > auto array = returnsArray();
> > indices ~= array.ilength;
> >
> > This cuts down on the excessive verbosity of an explicit cast that's safe
> > 99.999 % of the time and encourages sprinkling it into code even if for
> the
> > foreseeable future it will be compiled in 32-bit mode.
> >
> > Two questions:
> >
> > 1.  Is everyone ok with me adding this as a convenience function to
> > std.array?
> > 2.  int or uint?  I used int only b/c that was the example on the
> newsgroup,
> > but I think uint makes more sense.
>
> I *strongly* oppose uint. We should take every possible opportunity to
> reduce usage of unsigned numbers.
> 'i' implies immutable.
> How about intlength  (or intLength ?)
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