February 27, 2023 [Issue 23748] New: associative arrays need 2 lookups to remove and extract, should be 1 | ||||
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https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23748 Issue ID: 23748 Summary: associative arrays need 2 lookups to remove and extract, should be 1 Product: D Version: D2 Hardware: All OS: All Status: NEW Severity: enhancement Priority: P1 Component: druntime Assignee: nobody@puremagic.com Reporter: qs.il.paperinik@gmail.com There is no way to remove a key–value pair and extract the value with one lookup. One has to make one lookup to get the value (if any), and another to remove the pair. Currently, the `remove` function returns a `bool` value indicating via `true` that a key–value pair with the passed `key` was present, and `false` when it was not. This could be improved by instead returning a pointer to the value if they pair existed, and `null` otherwise, i.e. exactly what `in` does, but additionally removing the value. With this enhancement, extract–remove is a trivial one-liner. Compare this: ```d Value* v = key in aa; aa.remove(key); if (v != null) { // handle the value // *v is valid even after removal. } ``` with this: ```d if (Value* v = aa.remove(key)) { // handle the value } ``` There should be minimal breakage because most current uses of `remove` will ignore its result anyways, and if not, the returned pointer converts to `true` implicitly if it is not `null` and `null` to `false` in contexts where a `bool` is required. If that breakage cannot be tolerated or the new implementation is deemed considerably more expensive than current `remove`, I suggest a new function by the name `removeAndExtract` or (cf. Scott Mayers: `takeOut`). -- |
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