On 22.01.2016 01:49, W.J. wrote:
How can I identify those ranges, or, how can I tell if any particular range has value semantics ? I didn't read any of this in the manual - not that I could remember anyways.
Generally you shouldn't. If you care about it either way, use .save or std.range.refRange.
If you don't want some range r to be consumed by some operation, pass r.save instead of plain r. If you want r to be consumed, pass refRange(&r). Only if you don't care if r is consumed or not, should you pass simply r.
If you know for a fact that copying r is the same as r.save, then you can just pass (and copy) r, of course. We know it's that way with dynamic arrays, because of their nature as pointer+length structures. But there's nothing wrong with calling .save on an array anyway.
Also, when a function takes a range via a ref parameter, then you don't need refRange, of course. The ref parameter ensures that no copy is made and that the original range is affected by the function.
