[swift-evolution] [pre-proposal] Automatic unwrapper boolean properties using unless keyword

[Guilherme Torres Castro]

Hello,

This is a Idea I got from Objetive-C, where nil is evaluate no false, this
feature can keep the code clean. For example:

if (![myList isEmpty]) { ... }

Will evaluate true or false even if myList is nil.
I know that Swift is not Design to work like Objetive-C, but sometimes this
make the code cleaner.

Example:

if !myList?.isEmpty { print("Ok") }

This is much more cleaner and easy to read than:

if !(myList != nill && mylist!.isEmpty) { print("Ok") }

Moreover the tip from the Xcode (when you type the  lead user to generate
wrong code when you type this code :

if !((myList?.isEmpty)) != nil { print("Ok") }

As you can see the suggestion made by the Xcode will not work, because
event if the list is empty the expression will return true.

My ideia is to use some special syntax that permit optional to be evaluate
to boolean expression. Those syntax may be like in ruby
<http://www.tutorialspoint.com/ruby/ruby_if_else.htm>.

code if condition

So the code from the example will be:

print ("Ok") if !myList?.isEmpty

Or using the unless keyword:

unless myList?.isEmpty print("not empty") else print "empty"


I didn't spent much time thinking about the syntax keyword, because I want
to know first if you will consider a great addition to the language, if so,
we can work on details and a formal proposal.
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