In-place radix sort in D programming language

I'm trying to get the in-place radix sort example from In-Place Radix Sort working. So far I have this:

import std.random;

void swap(ref string i,ref string j) {

  string tmp = i;
  i = j;
  j = tmp;
}

void radixSort(ref string[] seqs, size_t base = 0) {
    if(seqs.length == 0)
        return;

    size_t TPos = seqs.length, APos = 0;
    size_t i = 0;
    while(i < TPos) {
        if(seqs[i][base] == 'A') {
             swap(seqs[i], seqs[APos++]);
             i++;
        }
        else if(seqs[i][base] == 'T') {
            swap(seqs[i], seqs[--TPos]);
        } else i++;
    }

    i = APos;
    size_t CPos = APos;
    while(i < TPos) {
        if(seqs[i][base] == 'C') {
            swap(seqs[i], seqs[CPos++]);
        }
        i++;
    }
    if(base <开发者_开发技巧 seqs[0].length - 1) {
        radixSort(seqs[0..APos], base + 1);
        radixSort(seqs[APos..CPos], base + 1);
        radixSort(seqs[CPos..TPos], base + 1);
        radixSort(seqs[TPos..seqs.length], base + 1);
   }
}

void main(string[] args) {

  string [] sequences;

  for(int n=0;n<10;n++) {
    string seq;
    for(int i=0;i<10;i++) {
      int r = rand()%4;
      if(r == 0) seq = seq ~ "A";
      if(r == 1) seq = seq ~ "C";
      if(r == 2) seq = seq ~ "G";
      if(r == 3) seq = seq ~ "T";
    }
    sequences = sequences ~ seq;
  }

  writefln("Unsorted");
  for(size_t n=0;n<10;n++) {
    writefln(sequences[n]);
  }

  radixSort(sequences,0);

  writefln("Sorted");
  for(size_t n=0;n<10;n++) {
    writefln(sequences[n]);
  }
}

However, this fails with:

radix.d(36): Error: slice expression seqs[0u..APos] is not a modifiable lvalue
radix.d(37): Error: slice expression seqs[APos..CPos] is not a modifiable lvalue
radix.d(38): Error: slice expression seqs[CPos..TPos] is not a modifiable lvalue
radix.d(39): Error: slice expression seqs[TPos..seqs.length] is not a modifiable lvalue

Under the Digital Mars D Compiler v1.066. I guess slices are not mutable, but... how should I go about fixing this?

I'm new to D and largely just interested in getting this example working.

You only need ref if you want to modify the reference itself. For an array, that means changing the length or reallocating. Since your radix sort is in-place, I'm not sure why you'd want that.

I have an implementation that's pretty complete at https://github.com/nordlow/phobos-next/blob/master/src/nxt/integer_sorting.d#L38.

Feel free to borrow whatever you need.