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> One issue to consider is that strings typically feature random access indexing of code points True but I find it's much rarer to actually need random access

> One issue to consider is that strings typically feature random access indexing of code points True but I find it's much rarer to actually need random access to arbitrary code points. Most of the time I either use strings as opaque "things" or I'm iterating through characters to find something interesting (e.g. parsing) where I can build my own index, if and when necessary. I do agree with the article that if an abstraction is very leaky it's better to be upfront about that.

richardwhiuk 7y ago
I think that accessing characters by index is _probably_ a code smell in most places, especially if that string may contain arbitrary UTF-8.
- masklinn 7y ago
  Accessing string content by arbitrary indices is probably an error. Accessing string content by indices you got from previous lookups is useful for a number of situations.
  - scatters 7y ago
    If you have an index from a previous lookup, that can be a byte index.
  - raiph 7y ago
    You're right to the degree that people probably aren't using P6. :)
ben509 7y ago
It's usually wrong, but you have a large number of people who don't get regular expressions. It's hard to visualize an automata crawling over a string and handing out matches. The simpler mental model of splitting and splicing is easily grokable, so there's a lot of utility in supporting it.