How difficult would it be to allow the '$' to be used instead of
length in something like:

Thing[] ta;
for (size_t i = 0; i < ta.$; i++)

It can be used in slices, and indexes, so it might well be
unambiguous here.

Steve Teale:

> How difficult would it be to allow the '$' to be used instead of
> length in something like:
>
> Thing[] ta;
> for (size_t i = 0; i < ta.$; i++)
>
> It can be used in slices, and indexes, so it might well be
> unambiguous here.

You can vote it:
https://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=7840

Bye,
bearophile

On Thursday, 20 February 2014 at 10:28:43 UTC, Steve Teale wrote:
> How difficult would it be to allow the '$' to be used instead of
> length in something like:
>
> Thing[] ta;
> for (size_t i = 0; i < ta.$; i++)
>
> It can be used in slices, and indexes, so it might well be
> unambiguous here.

I don't like it. It's a small difference in the number of characters between the two on a line, and .length is much easier to read, especially for people new to the language. I think given D's smaller userbase, anything which makes a line of code easier to read for people coming from other languages without getting in the way of other things is a bonus.

On Thursday, 20 February 2014 at 13:17:37 UTC, w0rp wrote:
> On Thursday, 20 February 2014 at 10:28:43 UTC, Steve Teale wrote:
>> How difficult would it be to allow the '$' to be used instead of
>> length in something like:
>>
>> Thing[] ta;
>> for (size_t i = 0; i < ta.$; i++)
>>
>> It can be used in slices, and indexes, so it might well be
>> unambiguous here.
>
> I don't like it. It's a small difference in the number of characters between the two on a line, and .length is much easier to read, especially for people new to the language. I think given D's smaller userbase, anything which makes a line of code easier to read for people coming from other languages without getting in the way of other things is a bonus.

Why not have both?

w0rp:

> length is much easier to read, especially for people new to the language.

But such new people find code like:  a[$ - 1]  so they need to know the meaning of $.

Bye,
bearophile

On Thursday, 20 February 2014 at 13:17:37 UTC, w0rp wrote:
> On Thursday, 20 February 2014 at 10:28:43 UTC, Steve Teale wrote:
>> How difficult would it be to allow the '$' to be used instead of
>> length in something like:
>>
>> Thing[] ta;
>> for (size_t i = 0; i < ta.$; i++)
>>
>> It can be used in slices, and indexes, so it might well be
>> unambiguous here.
>
> I don't like it. It's a small difference in the number of characters between the two on a line, and .length is much easier to read, especially for people new to the language. I think given D's smaller userbase, anything which makes a line of code easier to read for people coming from other languages without getting in the way of other things is a bonus.

well, at least it's not len(ta).

Mengu:

> well, at least it's not len(ta).

A free function len() is quite useful if you want to use it in higher order functions:

map(len, ["red", "yo"])

In D:

["red", "yo"].map!(s => s.length)
["red", "yo"].map!walkLength

Bye,
bearophile

On Thursday, 20 February 2014 at 13:52:20 UTC, Chris wrote:

>
> Why not have both?

I was not suggesting otherwise.

On Thursday, 20 February 2014 at 10:28:43 UTC, Steve Teale wrote:
> How difficult would it be to allow the '$' to be used instead of
> length in something like:
>
> Thing[] ta;
> for (size_t i = 0; i < ta.$; i++)
>
> It can be used in slices, and indexes, so it might well be
> unambiguous here.

it's ugly, how about ta.opLength = $ta = ta.length?

On Thursday, 20 February 2014 at 10:28:43 UTC, Steve Teale wrote:
> How difficult would it be to allow the '$' to be used instead of
> length in something like:
>
> Thing[] ta;
> for (size_t i = 0; i < ta.$; i++)
>
> It can be used in slices, and indexes, so it might well be
> unambiguous here.

Early versions of D already had the feature: you could write arr[0..length], but the feature proved to be ambiguous and was removed.
$ is meant to be a special indexing syntax (like two dots), it's not a member, not a length.