auto decoding rant

[Jonathan Shamir via Digitalmars-d]

I see this is a recurring rant (I apologize if this is a 
repeating topic, I'm new to the forums). Here's an example of 
something that should be simple in D but isn't:

enum string PATTERN = "abcd";
immutable char[10] repeatingPattern = 
PATTERN.cycle().takeExactly(10).array();

The fact that front(string) returns a dchar makes some really 
simple (and common) use-cases practically impossible.

Also note I can't cast to char[] in compile time? What's the 
reason for that?

I would recommend adding something like this to phobos (and in 
all fairness, it should have been the other way around):


auto noDecode(T)(T[] str) if (isNarrowString!(T[])) {
    static struct NoDecode {
        private T[] str;

        @property ref T front() {
            assert (!this.empty);
            return str[0];
        }
        @property bool empty() {
            return (str.empty);
        }
        void popFront() {
            if (!this.empty) {
                str = str[1 .. $];
            }
        }
        NoDecode save() {
            return this;
        }
    }
    return NoDecode(str);
}