[swift-evolution] Proposal: Add .times method to Integer type

[Kevin Ballard]

-1 here. It provides almost no utility outside of "hello world" style
sample code. Also this particular method is ambiguous, as people have
already said (the word "times" can mean multiplication just as much as
it can mean looping), and it also doesn't even make much sense when used
with non-literals, e.g. "foo.count.times" does not have the same "sounds
like English" behavior that "5.times" does. More generally, we shouldn't
be adding stuff to the standard library that doesn't provide any clear
benefit, both because it's API bloat and because everybody has to pay
for the code size.

-Kevin Ballrd

On Fri, Dec 18, 2015, at 10:25 AM, Cihat Gündüz via swift-evolution wrote:
> Dear Swift-Community,
>
> I’d like to propose an *addition of a useful method*, especially for
> beginners that also makes Swift much more readable in some situations:
> The addition of a .times method to Integer type(s).
>
> For example recently in one of my projects I wanted to test the
> scalability of an important piece of code and wrote this method:
>
> func testPerfQualityInPercentWithoutQualityImprovements() {
> self.measureBlock { let expectedQuality = 33.33 .stride(to: 5_000, by:
> 1).forEach { _ in
> XCTAssertEqualWithAccuracy(self.crossword.qualityInPercent,
> expectedQuality, accuracy: 0.1)               }        }    }
>
> As you can see what I basically wanted was to repeat the test some
> thousand times. I also like to use the Ruby language and one thing I
> love about it is that it has some really handy methods integrated to
> the language in situations like this which make the code very readable
> and therefore fun to use.
>
> I’m an even bigger fan of Swift so I’d love to see such useful methods
> appear in Swift, too and this is the first I came across that I really
> missed. So I’m asking myself, what if I could write the same code
> above like this:
>
> func testPerfQualityInPercentWithoutQualityImprovements() {
> self.measureBlock { let expectedQuality = 33.33 5_000.times {
> XCTAssertEqualWithAccuracy(self.crossword.qualityInPercent,
> expectedQuality, accuracy: 0.1)               }        }    }
>
> I think it could be added to the Swift standard library very easily
> (for example by using the .stride method like I used) without any side
> effects and has enough advantages to be part of Swift itself. What do
> you think?
>
> I wish you all the best, Cihat
>
>
> P.S.: This is my very first mail in such a mailing list so I did
>       everything correctly. ^.^
>
>
> _________________________________________________
> swift-evolution mailing list swift-evolution at swift.org
> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
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