On Monday, 23 November 2015 at 14:25:19 UTC, HaraldZealot wrote:
On Monday, 23 November 2015 at 12:09:13 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
On Monday, 23 November 2015 at 11:31:32 UTC, HaraldZealot
wrote:
RefRange is not intended to work with output ranges, and
output ranges are very different beasts from input ranges, so
any kind of reference type wrapper for output ranges should be
a separate construct. That being said, I'd be inclined to
argue that anything taking an output range should always take
it by ref, precisely because copying an output range almost
never results in the correct semantics. So, we should probably
make it a general policy that anything accepting an output
range should accept it by ref.
So, you see that to open a PR about changes _by value_ to _by
ref_ semantic for all functions operate with out range
(especially for copy) is better way? But this breaks existing
API...
That would require a larger discussion. It's come up before, but
I don't recall if anything was ever decided. Output ranges pretty
much have to be reference types or be passed by ref to work
properly though. Pseudo-reference types might work under some
circumstances (e.g. dynamic arrays), but outright value types
won't. So, we almost have to make it so that they're passed by
ref in order for them to work. But output ranges probably are
long past due for a more in-depth discussion of their problems
and how we should address them (e.g. how is code supposed to deal
with the possibility of the output range being full) - though at
this point, we're mostly trying to move to using lazy input
ranges in most cases, since they're more flexible, and that will
limit the scope of output ranges and make their deficiencies less
of an issue (though we really should fix them).
In any case, no, you probably shouldn't just start creating PRs
which put ref on various output range parameters in Phobos.
Certainly, I would think that your Referencer type is going in
the wrong direction, because it's declaring a bunch of
functions that have nothing to do with output ranges.
I see my referencer as universal wrapper to any value-like
stuff (e.g. structs or even simple POD variable), not only for
out ranges (or input ranges). But possibly it is to general
(and so not perfect) solution.
Well, if all you want is to get a reference type out of a value
type, then putting it on the heap and using a pointer to it would
be a solution. Using RefCounted would be another, and I would
think that it would be similar to what you're trying to do, since
what you're trying to do sounds like it would be something like a
RefCounted that doesn't actually involve reference counting.
- Jonathan M Davis
