On Tuesday, 2 October 2012 at 17:24:32 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
wrote:
Yes. Unfortunately there are few, few cases in which size_t is
insufficient (e.g. an input range from a file or a large iota,
both on 32-bit builds). I personally think these are too few to
need formal support.
I'd throw bit arrays into the mix, where 32 bit can also be quite
small. There might also be some other clever hacks using custom
index types for representing non-linear data structures as ranges.
The question is whether such ranges are likely to be used as
random access ranges. I can't come up with a compelling use case
right now, but I'd rather think twice before throwing support for
them out of the window and later regretting it. Also, one of the
simplest ranges (iota) not fitting the range concept has somewhat
of an odd aftertaste.
David
