Re: Latest suggestion for 202x

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On 2019-06-22 10:43, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> "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.

Another cases are having control over memory management and 
marshaling/serialization, when keeping object in a single contiguous 
location is important.

> 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.

Just let strings have two container interfaces at once. Here is a case 
where different brackets could be useful. E.g. S(I) could give a code 
point/character, S[J] could give an encoding unit, e.g. octet for UTF-8 
string or word for UCS-2. However overloading of () should work no 
problem, IMO.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de