On Monday, 8 April 2019 at 18:04:28 UTC, kdevel wrote:
What's the purpose of .release? The documentation in
https://dlang.org/phobos/std_range.html#.SortedRange.release is
rather monosyllabic.
The sort function returns a SortedRange, which is usually an
array wrapper with the extra type information that its content is
sorted, enabling certain algorithms like lowerBound and
upperBound with help of binary search.
"Ranges whose elements are sorted afford better efficiency with
certain operations. For this, the assumeSorted function can be
used to construct a SortedRange from a pre-sorted range. The
std.algorithm.sorting.sort function also conveniently returns a
SortedRange. SortedRange objects provide some additional range
operations that take advantage of the fact that the range is
sorted."
(https://dlang.org/phobos/std_range.html)
When you release it, you get it back as a normal slice without
the type information that it is sorted, so you can assign it to
regular old array variables. As mentioned in the quote, you can
get it back as sortedRange with assumeSorted.
