[swift-evolution] Should we rename "class" when referring to protocol conformance?

[Jesse Squires]

> Personally I have always felt “class” was an oddball special case here
that's unneeded because we have a perfectly good protocol that means the
same thing: AnyObject.

+1

Repurposing the `class` keyword to constrain a protocol to reference types
has always felt awkward, out-of-place, and inconsistent with the rest of
the language. I would love to see this changed to `AnyObject` as Dave
suggests.

Given all of the other great refinements for language consistency that have
been proposed and accepted for Swift 3, the awkwardness of using `class`
here is even greater than before.

Jesse



On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 11:06 AM, Dave Abrahams via swift-evolution <
swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

>
> on Mon May 02 2016, David Sweeris <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>
> > I was just thinking that:
> >
> >     protocol Foo : reference {}
> >
> > might be more to the point than:
> >
> >     protocol Foo : class {}
> >
> > I know that it’s currently a moot point because classes are the only*
> > reference-semantics type of type in Swift, but it’s conceivable that
> there might
> > some day be others. Anyway, I’m not saying it’s a big deal or anything,
> I’m just
> > trying to think of any source-breaking changes we might want to make
> before
> > Swift 3 drops, and this seems like an easy one.
> >
> > - Dave Sweeris
> >
> > * I’m not actually sure this is true. I have a very vague recollection
> about
> > some protocols getting reference semantics in certain circumstances, but
> the
> > memory is so hazy I’m not sure I trust it. Also I can’t remember if the
> > “indirect” keyword in enums affects the semantics.
>
> Personally I have always felt “class” was an oddball special case here
> that's unneeded because we have a perfectly good protocol that means the
> same thing: AnyObject.
>
> --
> Dave
>
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>



-- 
Jesse Squires

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