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digitalmars.D.learn - Casting the Result of splitter() into a string array

reply "GreatEmerald" <pastas4 gmail.com> writes:
A quick and simple question, but I couldn't find the answer to it 
by myself: how do I cast the return type of std.array.splitter() 
into a string[]?

According to the compiler, splitter() has a return type Result. 
How useful... I assume it's a disguised tuple? If I try to simply 
assign the result to a string array, like this:

   string[] Bits = splitter(" a b");

I get an error "Error: cannot implicitly convert expression 
(splitter(" a b")) of type Result to string[]". Then if I make an 
explicit cast, I get "Error: cannot cast from Result to string[]".

So there must be something obvious that I'm missing... I also had 
the same problem when trying to cast the result of 
std.algorithm.filter!() to string[].
Jun 17 2012
next sibling parent reply Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Sunday, June 17, 2012 13:39:19 GreatEmerald wrote:

 A quick and simple question, but I couldn't find the answer to it
 by myself: how do I cast the return type of std.array.splitter()
 into a string[]?
 
 According to the compiler, splitter() has a return type Result.
 How useful... I assume it's a disguised tuple? If I try to simply
 assign the result to a string array, like this:
 
    string[] Bits = splitter(" a b");
 
 I get an error "Error: cannot implicitly convert expression
 (splitter(" a b")) of type Result to string[]". Then if I make an
 explicit cast, I get "Error: cannot cast from Result to string[]".
 
 So there must be something obvious that I'm missing... I also had
 the same problem when trying to cast the result of
 std.algorithm.filter!() to string[].


They're ranges. This is probably the best explanation online at the moment:

http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/ranges.html

If you want to convert a range to an array, use std.array.array, though in the 
case of a string, to!string(range) will probably work. However, it makes no 
sense to convert the result of splitter to a string. What's the point of 
splitting them just to join them?

splitter(" a b ") is going to return a range of strings. If you were to do 
array(splitter("a b ")), you'd get ["", "a", "b"].

- Jonathan M Davis
Jun 17 2012
next sibling parent reply "GreatEmerald" <pastas4 gmail.com> writes:
On Sunday, 17 June 2012 at 11:58:58 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 splitter(" a b ") is going to return a range of strings. If you 
 were to do
 array(splitter("a b ")), you'd get ["", "a", "b"].


Aha, that worked! Thanks!

Still makes me wonder how you're supposed to figure out that this 
type is a range and not anything else from the library 
documentation, though... Oh well.
Jun 17 2012
parent Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com> writes:
On Sunday, June 17, 2012 14:11:27 GreatEmerald wrote:

 On Sunday, 17 June 2012 at 11:58:58 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

 splitter(" a b ") is going to return a range of strings. If you
 were to do
 array(splitter("a b ")), you'd get ["", "a", "b"].


 
 Aha, that worked! Thanks!
 
 Still makes me wonder how you're supposed to figure out that this
 type is a range and not anything else from the library
 documentation, though... Oh well.


The documentation says so in most cases. It certainly does for filter. It is 
true that it doesn't for spliter though. But pretty much everything in 
std.algorithm and std.range take and return ranges. And std.array generally 
takes arrays and returns either arrays or ranges.

- Jonathan M Davis
Jun 17 2012
prev sibling parent Trass3r <un known.com> writes:
 If you want to convert a range to an array, use std.array.array


This is a constant source of confusion and it also is a crappy design to  
use a function in a totally different module for this purpose imho.
Can't these Result types get an eval() method and/or be made implicitly  
convertible to an array where appropriate?

The C++ matrix library Eigen uses this approach and it works out  
fantastically.
a*b returns an object representing this expression. If I do want to use  
this I write 'auto c=a*b;'.
If I want the result I can explicitly use its eval() method (which is  
especially useful inside a bigger expression) or something like 'Matrix  
c=a*b;' which also evaluates the expression.
Jun 17 2012
prev sibling parent "bearophile" <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
GreatEmerald:


 A quick and simple question, but I couldn't find the answer to 
 it by myself: how do I cast the return type of 
 std.array.splitter() into a string[]?


splitter(), filter(), etc, are lazy, they return an iterable.

Use split() instead of splitter().

Bye,
bearophile
Jun 17 2012