[swift-evolution] Bool vs. Optional<Void>

[Krzysztof Siejkowski]

Does it make sense to somehow unify them? Perhaps turn Bool into a typealias for Optional<Void> and move all of its conformances into (not yet supported) conditional conformances on Optional?
I’m against unifying those concepts, for two main reasons:

1) These are two separate constructs. When Bool is turned into Optional<Void>, it’s logical to be able to map it to Optional<T>, to flatMap it, to forEach it etc. I can’t see a situation where mapping Bool to, let’s say, Optional<Array<String>> is a readable statement.

2) Bool is a very basic type, one of the first to use when learning programming. Making it an alias for a widely more complicated construct will introduce special cases that will be misleading for those learning to code.



I believe the situation where Optional<Void> is used to indicate the existence or absence of particular condition could be better resolved. Two alternatives that come to mind:

a) „isDefined” method on Optional, converting any Optional to Bool

b) just writing optionalVoid.map { return true } ?? false at the end of your pipe to transform otherwise ambiguous Void? to Bool clearly expressing your thoughts.



Krzysztof





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Brent Royal-Gordon
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