[swift-evolution] Foundation and value types

[David Smith]

There's certainly plenty of room for optimization in bridging of specific types, which could help these general cases (e.g. an Array<NSString> being cast to Array<String> would be sped up by improvements to NSString->String bridging performance, and so on). I've identified various improvements that could be made over the last year or so, and I'm sure profiling would turn up more in short order.

	David

> On Dec 10, 2015, at 5:24 PM, Dmitri Gribenko via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 5:19 PM, Tony Parker <anthony.parker at apple.com <mailto:anthony.parker at apple.com>> wrote:
>> I’m not particularly happy with the existing bridging.
>> 
>> First, it’s not available on all platforms.
>> 
>> Second, it’s often inefficient (c.f.
>> https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/stdlib/public/core/String.swift#L476 <https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/stdlib/public/core/String.swift#L476>,
> 
> This is not an issue with bridging.  String needs a different hash
> code because it implements == differently, and hash code and equality
> semantics have to match.
> 
>> https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/stdlib/public/core/ArrayCast.swift#L159 <https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/stdlib/public/core/ArrayCast.swift#L159>,
> 
> In this case, the user explicitly asked to check whether a cast is
> possible using 'as?', there is no other way to implement this.  When
> it is possible to do a cast lazily, we do it lazily.
> 
>> others).
>> 
>> Third, it causes confusing API discrepancies. e.g. here:
>> (https://github.com/apple/swift-corelibs-foundation/blob/master/Foundation/NSError.swift#L47)
>> 
>>    /// - Experiment: This is a draft API currently under consideration for
>> official import into Foundation
>>    /// - Note: This API differs from Darwin because it uses [String : Any]
>> as a type instead of [String : AnyObject]. This allows the use of Swift
>> value types.
>>    private var _userInfo: [String : Any]?
>> 
>> 
>> On Darwin this is [String: AnyObject] - but then, why does it accept
>> Swift.String, which is clearly not an object? Because of magic stuff
>> happening behind your back (which, because of #1, does not happen on Linux).
> 
> Yes, we need to make it consistent.
> 
> Dmitri
> 
> -- 
> main(i,j){for(i=2;;i++){for(j=2;j<i;j++){if(!(i%j)){j=0;break;}}if
> (j){printf("%d\n",i);}}} /*Dmitri Gribenko <gribozavr at gmail.com <mailto:gribozavr at gmail.com>>*/
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