[swift-evolution] SE-0025: Scoped Access Level, next steps

Ilya Belenkiy ilya.belenkiy at gmail.com
Mon Mar 28 05:58:54 CDT 2016


I understand the analogy, but I think that it doesn't apply here. If Swift
was 30 years old, the argument would work, but right now there are many
more people in the world who use the terms differently. Originally, I
suggested using another name for backward compatibility, but I am glad that
the core team decided to use the standard names.

On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 9:57 PM Ross O'Brien <narrativium+swift at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The specific meaning of 'public' and 'private' in programming languages
> refers to type-based symbol visibility. I'm thinking of C++, C#, Java and
> Objective C; their 'public' is Swift's 'internal'. They have no equivalent
> to Swift's 'public'. Swift has no equivalent to their 'private'.
>
> Possibly my familiarity with other languages isn't broad enough, but this
> is why I haven't understood the idea that Swift's use of 'private' is
> "right" or "obvious". You learn Swift's meanings of these terms by coding
> in Swift, you don't learn these meanings anywhere else first.
>
> To use a hopefully recognised example: an American who wants 'chips' wants
> what a Brit calls crisps; a Brit who wants chips wants what an American
> calls french fries. Which meaning of 'chips' is more intuitive? Answer: the
> one you grew up with.
>
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 1:10 AM, Brent Royal-Gordon via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>
>> > all of these names (public, internal, private, local) have specific
>> meaning in the context of computer languages.
>>
>> Yes, `local` has a meaning, but that meaning is generally *not* that it's
>> an access level. It usually has something to do with declaring variables
>> inside a function.
>>
>> For instance, Perl uses it to back up and restore a global variable. ML
>> uses it to create a scope (roughly). Lua and Julia use it to declare
>> lexical variables which are visible in enclosed scopes, which SE-0025's new
>> access level is specifically *not* supposed to allow.
>>
>> I don't know of any language where `local` is used as an access level. If
>> you're aware of an analogous use in another language, I'd be interested to
>> see it. But the examples I've found if anything *undermine* the suggestion
>> that `local` would be a good keyword choice.
>>
>
>> --
>> Brent Royal-Gordon
>> Architechies
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> swift-evolution mailing list
>> swift-evolution at swift.org
>> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/attachments/20160328/f8e5b0ec/attachment.html>


More information about the swift-evolution mailing list