On Thursday, September 15, 2011 03:41 bearophile wrote: > Christophe: > > > What is "unuseful and confusing" about: > > > > > > max!"a.length"(range); ? > > > > What is confusing is that I don't know if this function returns a > > length, or one of the elements of the range. > > In Python the max and min work this way, and the students I have taught > Python don't see this as a problem. On the opposite, they are thankful for > this feature. > > > It seems > > (to me) more natural to give it a predicate to compare elements two at a > > time. This is what is used in c++ std lib. > > It's less natural. And D is not C++, there are more than just C++ > programmers in D. And it leads to longer & more complex code.
I think that that's up for debate. I would fully expect a min/max function to be using a comparator function, which means using a binary predicate. Also, given that everything else in std.algorithm which takes a predicate is taking an actually predicate and not what should be compared, having max take something like "a.length" would be extremely bizarre. I don't find max!"a.length"(range) to be natural at all. Maybe it's more natural for someone with little to no programming experience, but I really don't think that your average programmer is going to find it more natural. - Jonathan M Davis
