> On Feb 5, 2017, at 16:47, Patrick Pijnappel <[email protected]> 
> wrote:
> 
> Note that zip(a.indices, a) requires advancing the index twice each 
> iteration, which for non-array collections is not necessarily super trivial. 
> Considering we're talking about such a low-level operation as iterating 
> through a collection this might be worth considering.
> 
> Personally I'm in favor of adding indexed().
> 

This isn't necessarily as much of a slam-dunk as you might think. Just as index 
advancement can theoretically be expensive, so can subscripting (though both 
need to be constant time, the constant factor could be high for either). Unless 
we made indexed() a protocol customization point rather than an extension 
(unlikely – we need to keep the number of those under control) and the 
collection provided a customized version, indexed() would need to use 
subscripting to return the element given the index it's tracking. Whereas 
iteration, being a much more limited forward-only API, might be implemented to 
be more efficient. So it's one hypothetical cost vs another. Alternatively, 
indexed() could be implemented to use an iterator for the elements part in 
parallel to the index advancement, in which case it's identical to the zip 
version. At least with the zip version, it's transparent which strategy is 
being used. In practice, for any Collection both costs should ideally be kept 
as small as possible, and so their cost is hopefully not material often enough 
to be factored into the decision of whether indexed() should exist on 
Collection, which should be decided on API ergonomics grounds.


PS for the standard library collections at least, any benchmarks that find that 
indexing/subscripting is significantly faster than iteration should be raised 
as bugs against the std lib/compiler/optimizer depending on where the problem 
is :)

>> On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 3:14 AM, Ben Cohen via swift-evolution 
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Feb 5, 2017, at 08:12, Ben Cohen <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> >> On Feb 4, 2017, at 14:43, Dave Abrahams via swift-evolution 
>> >> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> on Fri Feb 03 2017, Ben Cohen <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>>> On Feb 3, 2017, at 3:27 PM, Dave Abrahams via swift-evolution
>> >>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> I don't always make zip a method, but when I do, its argument label is
>> >>>> “to:”
>> >>>
>> >>> Hmm, that doesn’t sound very natural to me.
>> >>>
>> >>> Then again the problem with “zip(with:)" is it’s already kind of a
>> >>> term of art for a version that takes a function to combine the two
>> >>> values.
>> >>>
>> >>> There’s also the question of how to spell a non-truncating versions
>> >>> (returning optionals or taking a pad value).
>> >>
>> >> Is there a use-case for such a zip?
>> >>
>> >
>> > Whenever it's not OK to not silently discard the elements in the longer 
>> > list (which can be a correctness trap of zip if you're not careful). Say 
>> > you're matching up contestants from two groups, but want to give byes to 
>> > the unmatched contestants in the larger group. Or you're generating a list 
>> > of positioned racers in a 8-car race, putting in a computer player when 
>> > you run out of real players.
>> >
>> 
>> Gah, accidental double-negation, meant "not OK to silently discard"
>> 
>> >> --
>> >> -Dave
>> >>
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