Re:Moving from Ruby to Rust
by int_19h on Thursday February 14, 2019 @08:10PM
(#19167692)
> We rarely operate on ranges, but we operate on offsets all the time.
I would disagree with that assertion. Maybe it was true historically, but just look at how often ranges are used today - the fact that many languages have an abstraction for them in the core library is a testament to that.
I would also argue that having ranges (and underlying iterators) as opaque abstractions is preferable to conflating them with indices. Then you can have your cake and eat it too - the elements are counted naturally, but if you have an iterator to the first element, you can deal with 0-based offsets just as naturally.
I would disagree with that assertion. Maybe it was true historically, but just look at how often ranges are used today - the fact that many languages have an abstraction for them in the core library is a testament to that.
I would also argue that having ranges (and underlying iterators) as opaque abstractions is preferable to conflating them with indices. Then you can have your cake and eat it too - the elements are counted naturally, but if you have an iterator to the first element, you can deal with 0-based offsets just as naturally.