[swift-dev] Swift Class Encoding Standard?

[Joe Groff]

> On Oct 27, 2016, at 6:54 AM, swizzlr via swift-dev <swift-dev at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> Swift Foundation has an incomplete implementation of NSClassFromString/NSStringFromClass (link: https://github.com/apple/swift-corelibs-foundation/blob/master/Foundation/NSObjCRuntime.swift#L230-L282) due to a lack of a standardised method of encoding nested Swift classes, nor other Swift types.
> 
> I would think that given
> 
> module Contacts
> 
> class Person {
> 	struct Address {
> 		class Postcode {}
> 	}
> }
> 
> Postcode would be encoded as Contacts.Person.Address.Postcode. Since it is not possible to have two different types with the same identifier in the same namespace (i.e. an enum/a class/a struct with the same name at the same declaration level) the encoding would similarly be simple. May I proceed under that assumption or are there ABI stability issues I have yet to consider?

Yeah, that eventually ought to work. We're in the middle of setting up the layout of Swift metadata to make this kind of dynamic lookup easier to support.

-Joe