Slicing

Slicing is a way for a container to reference a subset (a "slice") of sequential data.

• This allows a kind of non-destructive editing where beginning and end items can be "trimmed" without actually modifying the data
• This works in conjunction with Sharing to improve performance by minimizing memory reallocation and copying
• The "sliced out" (removed) items remain in memory and are automatically cleaned up later when needed
• Containers that support slicing will have these methods:
  • slice() – Slices object, trimming all items outside given subset
  • unslice() – Cleans up sliced out data – called automatically by modifier methods
  • triml() – Trim (remove) items from left side (beginning)
  • trimr() – Trim (remove) items from right side (end)
  • truncate() – Truncate to given size by trimming (removing) items from end as needed
• Inspired by D Array Slices: http://dlang.org/d-array-article.html

Containers that support Slicing: List, String, MapList

Example:

#include <evo/string.h>
#include <evo/io.h>
using namespace evo;
static Console& c = con();

int main() {
    // Reference a string literal -- no memory allocated here
    String str("_test_");

    // Remove (slice out) underscore characters, same literal is still referenced
    str.slice(1, 4);

    // Append a space and number
    //  - This is a write operation (modifier) so will allocate a buffer to hold "test 123" -- sliced out data is discarded
    str << " 123";

    // Prints: test 123
    c.out << str << NL;

    return 0;
}