remove .slice() and .constSlice() from std.BoundedArray in lieu of .items()

[VisenDev]

closes #24003

[wooster0]

I wouldn’t mark this as closing the issue because it doesn’t rename slice() to items() as proposed.

[VisenDev]

I wouldn’t mark this as closing the issue because it doesn’t rename slice() to items() as proposed.

Oh I missed that, I'll make that change

[Fri3dNstuff]

This PR might be a good time to change the way .items() calculates its return type - the current way:

switch (@TypeOf(&self.buffer)) {
    *align(alignment.toByteUnits()) [buffer_capacity]T => []align(alignment.toByteUnits()) T,
    *align(alignment.toByteUnits()) const [buffer_capacity]T => []align(alignment.toByteUnits()) const T,
    else => unreachable,
}

is needlessly long, and quite hard to understand at first glance (especially if you don't know that receiver arguments in an anytype are by-reference) - I suggest it be changed to:

switch (@TypeOf(self)) {
    *Self => []align(alignment.toByteUnits()) T,
    *const Self => []align(alignment.toByteUnits()) const T,
    else => @compileError("Bad type"),
}

It does mean that the method will no longer cope with over-aligned arguments, but I don't think it's ever something that'll be encountered in practice...

[VisenDev]

switch (@TypeOf(self)) {
    *Self => []align(alignment.toByteUnits()) T,
    *const Self => []align(alignment.toByteUnits()) const T,
    else => @compileError("Bad type"),
}

Sure I can make that change. I'll update that

[Parzival-3141]

In keeping with the general deprecation strategy used by the project, .slice() and .constSlice() could be turned into @compileError's to help users switch in the next release cycle.

[jayschwa]

In keeping with the general deprecation strategy used by the project, .slice() and .constSlice() could be turned into @compileError's to help users switch in the next release cycle.

It would be nicest to keep slice and constSlice working, but note that they are deprecated in the documentation. That makes it easier for Zig projects to support both the latest tagged release (0.14.1) and follow master branch (0.15.0-dev). Once 0.15.0 is tagged, they can be removed.