[swift-evolution] Proposal: Replace logical AND (&&) and OR (||) operators with natural language "and" and "or"

[Matt Armitage]

I actually tend to find the &&, and the || easier to read while skimming
through that code. I think it's also more cohesive with the rest of the
operators to be symbols.
On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 11:50 PM J. Cheyo Jimenez via swift-evolution <
swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

> https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/2015-December/000032.html
> https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/2015-December/000101.html
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 16, 2015, Yannik Bloscheck via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>
>> Hello!
>>
>> I always found the logical AND (&&) and OR (||) operators a bit confusing.
>> The & as symbol for AND is pretty common in the world, but the | for OR
>> isn’t so much.
>> They also need to be typed twice, because the simple & and | were already
>> reserved for bitwise things in C. This makes it hard for beginners to
>> understand why they have to use two characters every time, because bitwise
>> operators are rarely used in the context of current end-user applications
>> (I personally can’t remember any occasion where I have seen them in Apple's
>> example projects).
>> To be clear: I don’t think we should get rid or change the bitwise
>> operators (if they even exist in Swift), I just want to illustrate why
>> natural language "and" and "or" could be better for logical AND (&&) and OR
>> (||) operators.
>> So the classical && and || may not be the best choice to begin with, but
>> if we look at them in the context in which the are used the most -
>> if/else-statements - they seem even more odd.
>> If/else-statements already use natural language: "if something {a} else
>> {b}". Therefore "if something1 and something2 {a} else {b}" just would be
>> the next logical step.
>> This improves readability, because it literally can just be read. The
>> brain doesn’t need to transfer && to "and" or || to "or". And because "and"
>> and "or" are very short words there isn’t really much more typing needed
>> than before.
>>
>> To illustrate my point compare the readability of this two lines yourself
>> (for more realism copy them in a text editor of your choice and color the
>> "if", "and", "&&" in the same color as they would be in an IDE):
>> if something1 == true && something2 != false && something3 == true &&
>> something4 != false && something5 == true && something6 != false {…}
>> if something1 == true and something2 != false and something3 == true and
>> something4 != false and something5 == true and something6 != false {...}
>>
>> The && and || have a long history in programming, but maybe it’s time to
>> replace them with something better.
>> Therefore I would suggest to replace && and || with natural language
>> "and" and "or" in Swift 3 to make the code more readable.
>> If the proposal gets accepted I would also suggest colouring them in the
>> same color as the "if", "else" etc. in IDEs like Xcode for optimal
>> readability.
>>
>>
>> The impact on existing code would be the following:
>>
>> Current:
>>
>> if temperatureInCelsius >= 0 && raining == true {
>>         print("You will need an umbrella")
>> }
>>
>> if cash >= 0.01 || creditcard == true {
>>         print("You can buy something here")
>> }
>>
>> Proposal:
>>
>> if temperatureInCelsius >= 0 and raining == true {
>>         print("You will need an umbrella")
>> }
>>
>> if cash >= 0.01 or creditcard == true {
>>         print("You can buy something here")
>> }
>>
>>
>> I’m sorry if this was already suggested somewhere or if there are obvious
>> reasons against it which I didn’t think of.
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