On Monday, 14 May 2012 at 10:31:47 UTC, Simen Kjaeraas wrote:
On Mon, 14 May 2012 12:01:06 +0200, Peter Alexander
<peter.alexander...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sunday, 13 May 2012 at 10:08:47 UTC, bearophile wrote:
Andrei Alexandrescu:
assumeSorted(range).contains(object)
is still one line, safer, and IMHO more self-explanatory.
It's self-explanatory if the name there contains something
like
"binarySearch". Otherwise it is NOT self-explanatory, I can't
assume it will use a binary search.
So it's surely not intuitive.
Bye,
bearophile
100% agree with this.
How anyone can possibly think that using
assumeSorted(r).contains(x) to do a binary search is more
self-explanatory than just writing binarySearch(r, x) is
beyond me. It's mind-boggling.
It is not intuitive, I agree. It is, however, documenting.
You're not
calling binarySearch on any old array, you assume it is sorted,
*then*
search it.
Perhaps it would be better to have a binarySearch function,
which can
only take a SortedRange, and gives an explanatory error message
when used
with a NonSortedRange.
How about users who don't know what binary search is. binary
search is an intuitive concept for people who have good
programming experience but assumeSorted(r).contains(x) is more
intuitive to higher level users. see how many searches you get
with binary search on google and how many with contains and
sorted. I'm not a developer, I do quantum chemistry and write
based on formulas and algorithms in papers, not on libraries. I
would prefer people to write code in more general concepts so
it's easier for me to understand and learn. And if you know
binary search, it's not that much harder to change your style to
assumeSorted(r).contains(x); in comparison, to a newbie learning
binary search. Also having multiple ways of doing the same thing
makes usage more confusing, so it should be avoided unless really
needed.
So in short, I support that Andrei aims for larger audience.
