[swift-evolution] use standard syntax instead of "do" and "repeat"

Dave Abrahams dabrahams at apple.com
Thu Dec 31 11:07:33 CST 2015


> On Dec 27, 2015, at 10:25 PM, Brent Royal-Gordon via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
>> So “try” instead of “do”. If there is no catch, then just use braces without a keyword for a block. 
>> 
>> And use do-while instead of repeat-while.

+1

> 
> Do you also propose no longer marking calls to throwing functions with `try`?

If try had both a single-statement/expression form as it does today, and a block form that makes it unnecessary to mark all the individual statements in the block, that would be an improvement.

> Have you read the "Error-Handling Rationale" document in the Swift repository? If not, please do: <https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/ErrorHandlingRationale.rst> If so, please explain why you disagree with it.

There are large classes of programs where you can know you don’t care exactly where a failure happens, e.g. (most init functions, all pure functions, any function that doesn’t break invariants).  In these cases marking every statement or expression that can throw is just noise.  Try writing some serialization/deserialization code where the underlying stream can fail to see what I mean; you’ll have “try” everwhere, and it adds nothing to comprehensibility or maintainability.  Personally I would like to be able to label the function itself and not have to introuce a scope, but IMO being able to create “try blocks” would be a welcome addition and would even match the common case in blocks with catch clauses, where being aware of the exact line where the error was generated is typically not useful.

-Dave



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