Re: Latest suggestion for 202x

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message 
news:qekjbb$vu0$1@gioia.aioe.org...
...
>> Why *should* array
>> indexing and function calls be treated as the same thing?
>
> Because they model the same thing, a mapping, when arrays come in 
> consideration.

Arrays only exist because they mapped easily to early hardware. In a modern, 
container-based system, there is no reason for them to exist separately --  
they are just a kind of container. Perhaps the compiler would map them to a 
hardware array specially, but that simply doesn't matter.

Specifically, I'd suggest that "array" is a container very similar to 
"vector" (esp. the bounded flavor). It should have roughly the same 
operations, just no expandability.

That would require separating strings and arrays, but that would clearly be 
a good thing -- a string needs to support multiple representations while 
that's rarely needed for arrays.

                                                      Randy.