• Nick Sabalausky (12/12) Jul 28 2010 Wouldn't it be better if std.string's indexOf/lastIndexOf returned
• Nick Sabalausky (12/24) Jul 28 2010 Another case where indexOf is currently awkward is if you want a slice o...
• Pelle (2/31) Jul 29 2010 auto slice = str.find("a", "b", "c").field[0];

"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:

Wouldn't it be better if std.string's indexOf/lastIndexOf returned 
haystack.length instead of -1 to indicate "not found"? The -1 is never 
really useful, but needs like this are fairly common:

auto slice = str[str.indexOf(needle)..$];

Which gives you an empty string if needle doesn't exist, which I find is 
usually exactly what I want anyway (and consistent with find's semantics, 
IIRC). But with the current semantics of indexOf/lastIndexOf, the risk of 
the occasional -1 forces the clean code above to be turned into something 
like this:

auto needleIndex = str.indexOf(needle);
auto slice = needleIndex==-1? "" : str[needleIndex..$];

Yuck.

"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:

"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> wrote in message 
news:i2r1nt$1egu$1 digitalmars.com...
 Wouldn't it be better if std.string's indexOf/lastIndexOf returned 
 haystack.length instead of -1 to indicate "not found"? The -1 is never 
 really useful, but needs like this are fairly common:

 auto slice = str[str.indexOf(needle)..$];

 Which gives you an empty string if needle doesn't exist, which I find is 
 usually exactly what I want anyway (and consistent with find's semantics, 
 IIRC). But with the current semantics of indexOf/lastIndexOf, the risk of 
 the occasional -1 forces the clean code above to be turned into something 
 like this:

 auto needleIndex = str.indexOf(needle);
 auto slice = needleIndex==-1? "" : str[needleIndex..$];

 Yuck.

Another case where indexOf is currently awkward is if you want a slice of 
str that strips off everything up until the first of a few possiblities. If 
indexOf returned haystack.length upon not found, you could just do something 
like this:

auto startIndex = min(str.indexOf("a"), str.indexOf("b"), str.indexOf("c"));
auto slice = str[startIndex..$];

With the current indexOf, the correct code is, well, quite a bit messier. 
And this is one case where find doesn't provide quite as nice of a solution 
either (unlike my first example which could probably be replaced entirely by 
find).

Pelle <pelle.mansson gmail.com> writes:

On 07/29/2010 07:05 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 "Nick Sabalausky"<a a.a>  wrote in message
 news:i2r1nt$1egu$1 digitalmars.com...
 Wouldn't it be better if std.string's indexOf/lastIndexOf returned
 haystack.length instead of -1 to indicate "not found"? The -1 is never
 really useful, but needs like this are fairly common:

 auto slice = str[str.indexOf(needle)..$];

 Which gives you an empty string if needle doesn't exist, which I find is
 usually exactly what I want anyway (and consistent with find's semantics,
 IIRC). But with the current semantics of indexOf/lastIndexOf, the risk of
 the occasional -1 forces the clean code above to be turned into something
 like this:

 auto needleIndex = str.indexOf(needle);
 auto slice = needleIndex==-1? "" : str[needleIndex..$];

 Yuck.

 Another case where indexOf is currently awkward is if you want a slice of
 str that strips off everything up until the first of a few possiblities. If
 indexOf returned haystack.length upon not found, you could just do something
 like this:

 auto startIndex = min(str.indexOf("a"), str.indexOf("b"), str.indexOf("c"));
 auto slice = str[startIndex..$];

 With the current indexOf, the correct code is, well, quite a bit messier.
 And this is one case where find doesn't provide quite as nice of a solution
 either (unlike my first example which could probably be replaced entirely by
 find).

auto slice = str.find("a", "b", "c").field[0];