[swift-evolution] Obsoleting `if let`

[Paul Ossenbruggen]

> On Feb 3, 2016, at 10:28 PM, Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Feb 3, 2016, at 10:23 PM, Brent Royal-Gordon via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> The original proposal says 
>>> 
>>> 	if let name? = optionalCondition { }
>>> 
>>> This would unwrap it? 
>>> 
>>> This seems like it should be mean the opposite.
>> 
>> The reason it unwraps it is that the thing on the left is a pattern, kind of like the cases of a case statement:
> 
> Right.  This makes sense to you, it makes sense to me, but it doesn’t make sense to most people using Swift.  More specifically, you can get a *long* way in Swift without understanding the depth of how pattern matching works in Swift, but if/let is inescapable.
> 
> -Chris

Which is why the “case" is there to help people make that association. It makes people think of pattern matching. I think that is an important distinction so I would say -1 to this proposal.