[swift-evolution] Proposal: Add SequenceType.first

[Kevin Ballard]

On Sat, Jan 2, 2016, at 07:17 PM, Dave Abrahams wrote:
>> But since it's a CollectionType, you need to preserve the ability to
>> access older values.
>
> Not once you replace it with a slice of itself.

Ah I see, I missed that subtlety. Or more specifically, when you first
said "slice" I was thinking of the Slice struct, but if you implement
slicing by hand then you can do this just fine.

>> So the only way to actually have this be a CollectionType is to
>> buffer the entire sequence up to the highest-accessed index.
>>
>> Of course, your use-case of processing a stream with some amount of
>> lookahead and throwing away the old data actually sounds like
>> something a "BufferedSequence" might provide. Or actually, a
>> "BufferedGenerator", because the only way to process a sequence is
>> with a generator and so all a "BufferedSequence" would really do is
>> just give you a "BufferedGenerator" from its generate() method.
>
> I’m quite certain this is buildable.  I’ve got my hands full at the
> moment or I’d create a prototype…

Now that I realize exactly what you meant, it should indeed be
buildable. Though short of requiring the user to provide it, I'm not
sure how to pick an appropriate chunk size.

-Kevin Ballard
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