[swift-evolution] [Review] SE-0005 Better Translation of Objective-C APIs Into Swift

[Jordan Rose]

Y'know, I was going to complain about this too, and wrote up an example, complete with call site…

accountStore.account(currentID)

…and then realized that it didn't bother me as much as I thought. "account" is a noun, so this is either getting or creating an account for me (as if it were a property), and it's going to use "currentID" to do it.

I'm very used to "fooWithBar: baz" meaning either "get me the foo that has a bar matching baz" or "create me a foo with its bar set to baz". But I'm not sure this new convention is any worse, now that the base name isn't assumed to include the first argument.

Jordan



> On Jan 28, 2016, at 0:51, David Hart via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> Loss of 'with' sounds weird in certain cases:
> 
> - func account(identifier identifier: String!) -> ACAccount!
> + func account(identifier: String!) -> ACAccount!
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> On 28 Jan 2016, at 00:31, Douglas Gregor via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
> 
>> 
>>> On Jan 27, 2016, at 10:03 AM, Dave Abrahams via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> on Wed Jan 27 2016, Matthew Johnson <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Doug,
>>>> 
>>>> I think this change looks great!  I don’t have time to look through
>>>> the full patch but did look through quite a bit.  It adds clarity in
>>>> the vast majority of cases I looked at.
>>>> 
>>>> It seems like with-as-separator is a good heuristic for determining
>>>> when the first parameter is not essential to a good name for the
>>>> fundamental operation.  I agree with the comments earlier on that in
>>>> these cases a label for the first parameter is the best approach.
>>>> 
>>>> I also really like that this groups methods with the same fundamental
>>>> operation into overload families where they previously had independent
>>>> names.  This is a big win IMO.
>>>> 
>>>> There is a first-parameter-is-an-ID pattern I noticed after this
>>>> change.  I show a few examples here, but there are a lot more:
>>>> 
>>>> -  func trackWithTrackID(trackID: CMPersistentTrackID) -> AVAssetTrack?
>>>> +  func track(trackID trackID: CMPersistentTrackID) -> AVAssetTrack?
>>>> 
>>>> -  func trackWithTrackID(trackID: CMPersistentTrackID) -> AVFragmentedAssetTrack?
>>>> +  func track(trackID trackID: CMPersistentTrackID) -> AVFragmentedAssetTrack?
>>>> 
>>>> -  func trackWithTrackID(trackID: CMPersistentTrackID) -> AVCompositionTrack?
>>>> +  func track(trackID trackID: CMPersistentTrackID) -> AVCompositionTrack?
>>>> 
>>>> - func discoverUserInfoWithUserRecordID(userRecordID: CKRecordID,
>>>> completionHandler: (CKDiscoveredUserInfo?, Error?) -> Void)
>>>> 
>>>> + func discoverUserInfo(userRecordID userRecordID: CKRecordID,
>>>> completionHandler: (CKDiscoveredUserInfo?, Error?) -> Void)
>>>> 
>>>> The first argument label `trackID` seems like it repeats type
>>>> information without adding clarity.  I think it would be better to
>>>> just use `id` here.  It seems like a candidate for heuristics as well.
>>>> For example, if the type name ends in ID and the label is a suffix of
>>>> the type name we could just use `id`.  This is a somewhat specific
>>>> pattern, but IDs are common enough that it might make sense.
>>> 
>>> Actually I've been saying for a while that arguments called ID,
>>> identifier, and name should not be labelled at all in many cases.  Think
>>> about it.
>> 
>> 
>> Patch where the words “ID”, “Identifier”, and “Name” in a name are considered to match the type “String”:
>> 
>> <id-identifier-name-match-string.patch>
>> 
>> … and then extending the rule to zap first argument labels named “identifier”, “id”, or “name”:
>> 
>> <id-identifier-name-no-first-arg-label.patch>
>> 
>> 
>> (I’m not sure which one of these you meant, or something different):
>> 
>> 
>> 	- Doug
>> 
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