[swift-evolution] repeat loop enhancement

[Chris Lattner]

> On Dec 8, 2015, at 10:05 PM, André Videla <zephyz at me.com> wrote:
> 
> How about having a default implementation in the standard library for it? 
> We avoid syntactic sugar and we allow for this very simple yet useful expression.
> And we’ve seen solutions in this thread using autoclosurses and extensions
> 
> 5.times {
>    …
> }

If the teaching angle is the motivation, then I’d say that this is worse.  

> 
> or a function
> 
> repeat(4) {
>    …
> }

Note that this *is* the proposal. :-)  “repeat” is a keyword in swift.

-Chris

> 
> all sound good to me.
> 
> - André
> 
> 
>> On 09 Dec 2015, at 06:58, Chris Lattner via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> On Dec 8, 2015, at 4:43 PM, Daniel Steinberg via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>> For me this comes up when teaching children or new programmers. (Perhaps not a valid use case)
>> 
>> This is a very valid use case.
>> 
>> FWIW, “repeat N {}” was originally designed and scoped into the Swift 2 implementation of the feature, but was cut due to schedule limitations.  There is precedent for this sort of feature in many teaching oriented languages (e.g. Logo).
>> 
>> I’d say that the pro’s and con’s of this are:
>> 
>> + Makes a simple case very simple, particularly important in teaching.
>> + Even if you aren’t familiar with it, you can tell at first glance what the behavior is.
>> - It is “just syntactic sugar”, which makes the language more complex.
>> - It is a very narrow feature that is useful in few practical situations.
>> 
>> -Chris
>> 
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