Re: [Vala] Libgee's Roadmap proposal

[Quikee <quikee gmail com>]

Hi,

A little more than a year ago I have made a proposal to extend LibGee
when I rewrote the tests for it, but at that time there was not much
interest in the changes. It may be good to repeat what I had in mind
at that time:

> I would also like to propose an extension to the interfaces in form of additional convenient / often used 
> methods. What I had in mind is this:
>
> Collection interface:
> - void add_all(Collection) - Adds all items from the input collection to this collection. Convenient for 
> joining collections. Java also has this on the interface of Collection.
> - bool contains_all(Collection) - Checks if all items in the input collection are present in this 
> collection. Convenient for checking items for example if "a" AND "b" exist in collection.
> - bool contains_any(Collection) - Checks if any items in the input collection are present in this 
> collection. Convenient for checking items for example if "a" OR "b" exist in collection.
> - bool is_empty() - special state of a collection when it doesn't contain any value. Added because it is 
> clearer as list.size == 0.
>
> List interface
> - G first()
> - G last() - First and last items are often special - it adds better clarity to the algorithm if they don't 
> need to be "addressed" as list.get(0) or worse list.get(list.size -1).
>
> Set interface
>
> Map interface
> - void set_all(Map) - Same as add_all for collections.
> - expose Node<K,V> and make it possible to iterate through Nodes:
> foreach (Node<int,int> item in map.get_nodes()) {
> }
>
> Iterators
>  - It would be convenient to have a reverse iterator for lists which would also allow to iterate backwards.
>  - class with special iterators/iterables that can iterate Forward / Backwards, skip elements, iterate 
> through enumerated list, generators

Some of the things have already been proposed and there are other
things on my mind that could be done.

I still have the code of the changes (including tests) somewhere - I
will seek them out and merge them with the latest libgee version.

Maybe it would be a good thing to add on the libgee wiki a subpage
with proposed changes/additions so that all this things aren't
forgotten.

Regards, Tomaž