[swift-evolution] Proposal: newtype feature for creating brand new types from existing types

[Gwendal Roué]

Considering the number of times I’ve read about this topic in other languages, I must agree :-)

Yet there are two difficulties:

First, what does Bar get from Double ?

When you say "after creating Bar, I can extend Bar independenly of Double", the problem lies in the meaning of "after". In a language like Ruby, there is an "after", but there is no such clear thing in Swift: modules/packages are compiled as a whole, and module A can extend a type defined the the module B.

More, let’s see what happens below:

1	let d: Double = 1.0
2	let b: Bar = d			// Compiler error, I presume.
3	let b: Bar = Bar(d)		// Mandatory so that Bar can be put to any use
4	let b: Bar = 1.0

That point 4 is tricky.

If it is not an error, then 2. should succeed as well, don’t you think?
If it is an error, then one may want to add FloatLiteralConvertible to Bar. Oops, Double already implements it.

Hm. I’m afraid I haven’t found the solution :-)

Gwendal Roué

> Le 11 déc. 2015 à 21:09, Tuur Anton via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> a écrit :
> 
> //Existing typealias feature.
> //Foo acts exactly the same way as Double. It's the same thing.
> //Double can be used instead of Foo anywhere.
> typealias Foo = Double
> 
> //Proposed newtype feature.
> //Bar acts exactly the same way as Double and  is the same
> //thing behind the scenes (until we extend it; see below).
> //Trying to use Double instead of Bar will result in a compile-time error.
> newtype Bar = Double
> 
> Of course, after creating Bar - a "copy" of the type Double, so to speak - I can extend Bar independenly of Double as one would expect.
> 
> This would be highly useful.
> 
> Your thoughts?
> 
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