[swift-evolution] TreeLiteralConvertible

[Milos Rankovic]

Hi John and Brent, 

> On 14 Apr 2016, at 22:22, John McCall <rjmccall at apple.com> wrote:
> 
> multiple-conformance idea doesn't work


The idea is not multiple-conformance (or overloading), but multiple (two) initialisers required by the literal-convertible protocols:

protocol TreeLiteralConvertible {
	associatedtype LeafValue
	init(literal: Self.LeafValue...)
	init(literal: Self...)
}

… and:

protocol DictionaryTreeLiteralConvertible {
	associatedtype Key
	associatedtype LeafValue
	init(literal: Self.LeafValue...)
	init(literal: (Key, Self)...)
}

> Note that all of your examples rely not just on recursion but on heterogeneous recursion

The crux of the matter is not heterogeneity in general, but of the leaf value in particular. This is what Brent is addressing. All my examples, save one, had a uniform leaf value type (even the Tree<SKAction> example). The one exception is my second JSON example. There I did not post the lift operator overload as you can probably imagine it. Minimally:

enum JSONValue {
	case Text(String)
	case Integer(Int)
}

prefix func ◊ <Key> (leaf: String) -> DictionaryTree<Key, JSONValue> {
	return .Leaf(.Text(leaf))
}

prefix func ◊ <Key> (leaf: Int) -> DictionaryTree<Key, JSONValue> {
	return .Leaf(.Integer(leaf))
}


let johnny: DictionaryTree<String, JSONValue> =
[
	"name": ◊"Johnny Appleseed",
	"age": ◊25,
	"address": [
		"house_number": ◊21,
		"street": ◊"2nd Street",
		"city": ◊"New York"
	]
]

Notice in particular how much contextual information you are getting from the expected return type. Still though, as Brent, points out, this won’t work with the two literal-convertable protocols. Nevertheless, I’d be very happy if they could be added as a first step since I suspect that would be the easiest option and one that would still allow for all my examples so far to work without the lift operator; all except this `JSONValue` example.

milos
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/attachments/20160414/81d4e166/attachment.html>