June 25, 2020
As an extension of my previous thread (https://forum.dlang.org/thread/nupwljahyutnyxdvpxob@forum.dlang.org), I wanted to ask about iterators in structs.  I will start with the following code:

void main()
{
    int[5] a = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4];
    int[5] b = [5, 6, 7, 8, 9];

    auto x = ChunksOf(chain(a[], b[]), 2);
}

struct ChunksOf
{
    this(R)(R r, size_t width)
    {
        auto iter = r.chunks(width);
        assert(is(typeof(iter) == Chunks!R));
    }
}

This code works as expected.  However, if the struct changes to:

struct ChunksOf
{
    Chunks!R iter;

    this(R)(R r, size_t width)
    {
        this.iter = r.chunks(width);
        assert(is(typeof(iter) == Chunks!R));
    }
}

it doesn't compile because R is only in the scope of the constructor.  This leads me to change the struct to:

struct ChunksOf(R)
{
    Chunks!R iter;

    this(R r, size_t width)
    {
        this.iter = r.chunks(width);
        assert(is(typeof(iter) == Chunks!R));
    }
}

This works, only if I change the declaration of x in main() to:

    auto x = ChunksOf!(chain(a[], b[]))(chain(a[], b[]), 2);

This requires me to pass the iterator as a template parameter and a regular parameter.  Since this is a bit redundant, and I wanted to know if there was a better way to do it.

Thanks for the help!
June 25, 2020
On Thursday, 25 June 2020 at 18:47:42 UTC, repr-man wrote:
> struct ChunksOf(R)
> {
>     Chunks!R iter;
>
>     this(R r, size_t width)
>     {
>         this.iter = r.chunks(width);
>         assert(is(typeof(iter) == Chunks!R));
>     }
> }
>
> This works, only if I change the declaration of x in main() to:
>
>     auto x = ChunksOf!(chain(a[], b[]))(chain(a[], b[]), 2);
>
> This requires me to pass the iterator as a template parameter and a regular parameter.  Since this is a bit redundant, and I wanted to know if there was a better way to do it.
>
> Thanks for the help!

The usual solution is to create a helper function:

ChunksOf!R chunksOf(R)(R r, size_t width)
{
    return ChunksOf!R(r, width);
}

The compiler can infer template arguments for function calls, so you can call it like this:

auto x = chunksOf(chain(a[], b[]), 2);