On Thursday, 10 July 2014 at 17:01:45 UTC, Jane Doe wrote:
One thing that bothers me quite a bit is that char's do not
have length. This makes it difficult in templates that can take
either strings or chars.
While one can write a template that returns the length of a
string or char, I would imagine that this could be implemented
in the compiler more efficiently?
char.length always returns 1.
Similarly, it would be nice to be able to use [] on chars.
char[x] returns char.
Example:
auto last(T)(T s) { return s[s.length-1]; }
void main()
{
writeln(last("asdf"));
writeln(last('c')); // fails!! But surely this should
work!
}
http://dpaste.dzfl.pl/cba5a635d08e
Error: s must be an array or pointer type, not char
Error: no property 'length' for type 'char'
Basically, I see no reason why char's can't be more confluent
with strings, at least on the surface. I would reduce code
bloat/specialization for no real reason.
If the compile knows a type is a char then char.length = 1 and
char[x] = char. Shouldn't be hard or cause any problems?
It looks nice on the surface but it quite quickly unravels.
string and char are very different types: one is a single-byte
value type, the other is a 16 byte (on x64) structure
representing an arbitrary length window on to arbitrary memory.
The situations where they are interchangeable in code are the
exceptions, not the rule.
