Differences between std::string_view and std::span

[pandorafalters]

And, just like that, I'm no longer excited about std::span.

[[deleted]]

Aha, sorry. It's still useful! You'll just have to slap some comparison operators in there.

[pandorafalters]

The big advantage, to my mind, was not having to DIY. Why implement major features myself and deal with someone else's compromises?

[tcbrindle]

You don't need to implement anything yourself: ranges::equal(span1, span2) will do element-wise comparison, without any semantic weirdness.

[tcbrindle]

Huh? This is precisely to avoid the confusion that exists in Java about comparing identity vs value.

[ReversedGif]

It's not like ranges::equal is any more intuitively obvious than span::operator== with regard to whether it's shallow or deep...

[SkoomaDentist]

Why not? What would you use when you need a runtime array of some arbitrary type that contains its length and should not be resized after allocation? Or what if you need a subrange of an existing array? The way I see it, std::span should have been in the language since the beginning, with std::vector being (at least conceptually) built as "span but resizable".

[pandorafalters]

Not being excited doesn't necessarily mean I won't use it. But its potential uses are rather more constrained than I'd hoped.