[swift-evolution] [Pitch] Normalize Slice Types for Unsafe Buffers

[Ben Cohen]

> On Dec 1, 2016, at 11:33 PM, Nate Cook via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> 3) Make all buffer pointers their own slices but use a different index type. If the indices were just wrapped pointers, that would handle the index sharing without needing an additional property on the buffer. We could also maintain integer-based stridable conformance (which greatly simplifies index arithmetic), since the indices would just offset by a byte for raw buffers or a stride for typed buffers.
> 

Unfortunately, switching to non-integer indices would change this from being mildly source-breaking to being extremely source-breaking, as there’s lots of code out there using buffers today indexing them with integers (including integer literals).

The big win with UnsafeBufferPointer having an integer index is it’s a drop-in replacement for arrays, so when you hit a performance problem using an array you can quickly switch to using a buffer under most circumstances instead without having to change much of your code – including code that uses for i in 0..<myArray.count, of which there is a lot out there in the wild. Switching to an opaque index would break anyone doing that.

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