On Sunday, 8 March 2015 at 18:05:33 UTC, Dennis Ritchie wrote:
> Is it possible to create such an array in which you can store strings and numbers at the same time?
>
> string-int[] array = [4, "five"];

As there's no mention of performance, what's wrong with a plain old string array with a bit of conversion and error checking?

string[] soup = ["4", "Test", "5", "More Test"];

On 2015-03-08 21:11:42 +0000, Paul said:

> On Sunday, 8 March 2015 at 18:05:33 UTC, Dennis Ritchie wrote:
>> Is it possible to create such an array in which you can store strings and numbers at the same time?
>> 
>> string-int[] array = [4, "five"];
> 
> As there's no mention of performance, what's wrong with a plain old string array with a bit of conversion and error checking?
> 
> string[] soup = ["4", "Test", "5", "More Test"];

OP is fighting a loosing battle in flame war on some obscure forum. F# enthusiast trolls OP into solving stupid puzzles that are trivial in F# (or any ML-family language) and clumsy in C-family languages.

In language holy wars the only winning move is not to play.

On Sunday, 8 March 2015 at 21:18:31 UTC, Max Klyga wrote:
> OP is fighting a loosing battle in flame war on some obscure forum. F# enthusiast trolls OP into solving stupid puzzles that are trivial in F# (or any ML-family language) and clumsy in C-family languages.
>
> In language holy wars the only winning move is not to play.

I have not played in a Holy war.

On Sunday, 8 March 2015 at 21:18:31 UTC, Max Klyga wrote:
> On 2015-03-08 21:11:42 +0000, Paul said:
>
>> On Sunday, 8 March 2015 at 18:05:33 UTC, Dennis Ritchie wrote:
>>> Is it possible to create such an array in which you can store strings and numbers at the same time?
>>> 
>>> string-int[] array = [4, "five"];
>> 
>> As there's no mention of performance, what's wrong with a plain old string array with a bit of conversion and error checking?
>> 
>> string[] soup = ["4", "Test", "5", "More Test"];
>
> OP is fighting a loosing battle in flame war on some obscure forum. F# enthusiast trolls OP into solving stupid puzzles that are trivial in F# (or any ML-family language) and clumsy in C-family languages.
>
> In language holy wars the only winning move is not to play.

Yawn :D

On 2015-03-08 at 20:26, Meta wrote:
> On Sunday, 8 March 2015 at 18:57:38 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
>> http://dpaste.dzfl.pl/2c8d4a7d9ef0 like this.
>
> What in the world is that code doing? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this.

It's a trick to reuse string internals to store an int.
A string is a struct with two values (length, ptr).
ivalue(i) is used to set ptr = i and length = 0.

Except that with this solution you will confuse empty strings with ints.
You could give such strings special treatment by replacing:

    this(string s){ svalue=s; }

with:

    this(string s){ svalue=s; if (!s.length) svalue = cast(string)(cast(char*)0)[X..X]; }
    // where X is some magic int value to mark that we are dealing with an empty string,

you'd still be confused if someone actually wanted to store the X value.

On Sunday, 8 March 2015 at 21:41:44 UTC, FG wrote:
> On 2015-03-08 at 20:26, Meta wrote:
>> On Sunday, 8 March 2015 at 18:57:38 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
>>> http://dpaste.dzfl.pl/2c8d4a7d9ef0 like this.
>>
>> What in the world is that code doing? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this.
>
> It's a trick to reuse string internals to store an int.
> A string is a struct with two values (length, ptr).
> ivalue(i) is used to set ptr = i and length = 0.
>
> Except that with this solution you will confuse empty strings with ints.
> You could give such strings special treatment by replacing:
>
>     this(string s){ svalue=s; }
>
> with:
>
>     this(string s){ svalue=s; if (!s.length) svalue = cast(string)(cast(char*)0)[X..X]; }
>     // where X is some magic int value to mark that we are dealing with an empty string,
>
> you'd still be confused if someone actually wanted to store the X value.

Oh, I see. What was tripping me up was

`svalue=cast(string)(cast(char*)0)[i..i];`

But I see now that it's just creating an empty string.

On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 18:57:37 +0000, Kagamin wrote:

> http://dpaste.dzfl.pl/2c8d4a7d9ef0 like this.

i hate annoying beginners too, but not to SUCH extent.

On Sunday, 8 March 2015 at 21:41:44 UTC, FG wrote:
> Except that with this solution you will confuse empty strings with ints.

The idea was to only make it memory-safe without union.