[swift-evolution] ternary operator ?: suggestion

Matthew Johnson matthew at anandabits.com
Sun Dec 13 07:45:01 CST 2015


I'm not quite sure how I feel about this specific proposal yet but in general I do want to see conditional expressions and removal of the ternary operator.

I would like to see "else if" included in whatever we adopt as the final solution.  Is there a reason this is omitted from this proposal?  I apologize if that was discussed in the thread.  I haven't followed every post. 

Sent from my iPad

> On Dec 12, 2015, at 11:54 PM, Paul Ossenbruggen via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> Hello All, 
> 
> Been sick in bed all day, but decided to try to be productive…
> 
> I did a rough draft of a proposal for implementing if expressions and switch expressions based upon the discussions we had here. I have tried to keep the scope of the changes as small as possible,  only added one keyword and kept things as similar to the existing language constructs as possible. If anyone wants to help me with this, or has feedback, please let me know,
> 
> https://github.com/possen/swift-evolution/blob/master/0020.md
> 
> Thanks,
> - Paul
> 
> 
> 
>> On Dec 12, 2015, at 3:51 PM, Paul Ossenbruggen <possen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Implied in using the  “then", if…then…else would aways require “else" when using “then” similar to how “guard" requires “else”. This  will help to make the difference between statements and expressions clear.
>> 
>> let x = If cond then X else Y
>> 
>> is the full form, where “else" can not be omitted. 
>> 
>>> On Dec 12, 2015, at 12:59 PM, Paul Ossenbruggen <possen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Dec 12, 2015, at 12:37 PM, Andrey Tarantsov via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 1. I would really hate to explain to someone when if needs a then and when it doesn't. That's the sort of inconsistency that shouldn't be added lightly.
>>> 
>>> agreed definitely want to be careful with that. I think with braces meaning statements that differentiation can be made clear. I would certainly start with statements when describing, just as you usually don’t talk about the ternary operator until later. 
>>> 
>>>> 3. If we can somehow solve all of this, I think I'll be +1 for replacing (A ? B : C) with some sort of (if A then B else C).
>>> 
>>> Yes that would be great.
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 4. Generally, I wonder how hard would it be for all statements to be usable as expressions? Why didn't Swift go that way from the start?
>>> 
>>> The biggest problem statement is you don’t need to exhaustively specify every outcome:
>>> 
>>> if cond {
>>> 	print(“hello”)
>>> }
>>> 
>>> whereas in an expression you have to specify what happens in the else.
>>> 
>>> let say = if cond then “hello” else “goodbye"
>>> 
>>> unless you go seriously off the deep end:
>>> 
>>> let say = if cond then “hello” 
>>> 
>>>  “say" then becomes an optional, *shudder*
> 
> 
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