Bug 473 – Arrays should have a way to take out an element or slice

There should be a simple way to efficiently remove/drop/erase an element or slice from anywhere in an array. David Medlock proposes this function for taking out one element: (http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D.learn&artnum=5077) // remove an item from an array template drop(T) { T drop( inout T[] arr, int which ) { debug if ( which>=arr.length) throw new Exception(str.format("Attempt to drop position %s from size %s",which,arr.length)); T result = arr[which]; int max = arr.length-1; for (; which < max; which++ ) arr[which]=arr[which+1]; arr.length= max; return result; } } Which Chris Nicholson-Sauls timed to be significantly faster than the alternative using slices: a = a[0..n] ~ a[n+1..length]; (http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D.learn&artnum=5099) A generalization of David's function to drop a range is straightforward. Sean Kelly proposed it might be worth trying out an implementation using memmove instead of a loop. (http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=digitalmars.D.learn&artnum=5100) A good syntax for this may be to mimick associative arrays, and use "remove()". int[] a = [0,1,2,3,4,5]; a.remove(3); // a now [0,1,2,4,5] a.remove(0,3); // a now [4,5] An alternative, more integrated syntax would be to allow the use of assignment of void. Then slice syntax could be used directly. a[2..4] = void; // removes a[2] and a[3] This would require some modification of opSlice methods, or introduction of new ones, like opIndexRemove, opSliceRemove.

std.algorithm.remove implements the needed functionality.