[swift-evolution] [Proposal] More lenient subscript methods over Collections (was: [Proposal] Safer half-open range operator)

Matthew Johnson matthew at anandabits.com
Fri May 6 11:22:26 CDT 2016


Did you consider making the safer, optional overload the "default" and just omit the label?

Sent from my iPad

> On May 6, 2016, at 10:23 AM, Luis Henrique B. Sousa via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> "bounded" sounds good to me, but I don't know if "optional" is a good choice as it could be highlighted as a reserved keyword:
> 
> https://github.com/luish/swift-evolution/blob/more-lenient-subscripts/proposals/nnnn-more-lenient-collections-subscripts.md#detailed-design
> 
> - Luis
> 
>> On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 5:08 PM, Vladimir.S via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>> From my point of view,
>> truncate -> bounded
>> lenient -> keep "lenient:" ? "requested:" ? "optional:"?
>> 
>>> On 29.04.2016 17:46, Thorsten Seitz wrote:
>>> Some alternatives to 'safe:'
>>> 
>>> existing:
>>> bounded:
>>> valid:
>>> 
>>> -Thorsten
>>> 
>>> Am 29.04.2016 um 00:20 schrieb Luis Henrique B. Sousa via swift-evolution
>>> <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>>:
>>> 
>>>> Thanks Vladimir, your considerations and suggestions are totally valid,
>>>> I'm going to change the document accordingly.
>>>> Also as a non-native English speaker I think that other words could fit
>>>> better, such as 'tolerant' or 'permissive' -- but I dunno if they would
>>>> look great as a label. We will come up with the right keyword for it.
>>>> 
>>>> In relation to bad code, it could be a valid argument if my initial
>>>> proposal was under discussion instead, where the default 'fail fast'
>>>> behaviour would be "camouflaged" and bugs would be more difficult to
>>>> catch. In this new proposal we have such features explicitly defined,
>>>> where the user will be familiar with what it does and what results to
>>>> expect for. I don't see a way that it could drive to bad written code.
>>>> 
>>>> - Luis
>>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 2:37 PM, Vladimir.S <svabox at gmail.com
>>>> <mailto:svabox at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>     I support this proposal. Probably we all should select the best
>>>>     labels (truncate/lenient or other). As not native English speaker, I
>>>>     don't feel like 'lenient' is well-known word or often-used word in
>>>>     software development. But all this just a details we need to discuss.
>>>> 
>>>>     What I think could be improved - is a motivation section. IMO the
>>>>     main purpose of proposed features is not to "eliminate the need for
>>>>     validations, reduce the number of fatal errors in runtime" but to
>>>>     allow us to have more clean code when *such validations just don't
>>>>     required*, when we just *don't care* about details.
>>>>     I.e. in situations, when we'll use [max(-1, a.startIndex) ..< min(5,
>>>>     a.endIndex)] and bounds checking manually to have the same result as
>>>>     in proposed subscripts.
>>>> 
>>>>     I.e. it is just a very handy addition to standard methods for
>>>>     collections, just like we can get first element by index but we have
>>>>     handy property '.first' for this purpose. Btw, it does not raise
>>>>     error, but returns T?. I think you can add notes regarding analogues
>>>>     with .first / .last properties(and probably with other) in proposal text.
>>>> 
>>>>     Someone can argue, that by using these subscripts, coders can write
>>>>     'bad' code - but I can't accept such an argument - 'bad' coders
>>>>     already can write 'bad' code with other features of Swift and at the
>>>>     end they can implement these subscripts in their project and write
>>>>     'bad' code. Should we stop to introduce handy and explicit feature
>>>>     for 'good' coders because of this?
>>>> 
>>>>     On 28.04.2016 15:11, Luis Henrique B. Sousa via swift-evolution wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>         As we have discussed throughout this thread, the initial proposal was
>>>>         modified to include alternative subscript methods instead of
>>>>         modifying the
>>>>         default operator/subscript behaviour.
>>>>         The first draft is
>>>>         here:
>>>>         https://github.com/luish/swift-evolution/blob/more-lenient-subscripts/proposals/nnnn-more-lenient-collections-subscripts.md
>>>> 
>>>>         I've also put this as a gist so that you can leave comments with
>>>>         respect to
>>>>         the proposal document itself. Any suggestion or help is very welcome.
>>>>         https://gist.github.com/luish/832c34ee913159f130d97a914810dbd8
>>>> 
>>>>         Regards,
>>>> 
>>>>         - Luis
>>>> 
>>>>         On Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 1:23 PM, Luis Henrique B. Sousa
>>>>         <lshsousa at gmail.com <mailto:lshsousa at gmail.com>
>>>>         <mailto:lshsousa at gmail.com <mailto:lshsousa at gmail.com>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>             This proposal seeks to provide a safer ..< (aka half-open range
>>>>             operator) in order to avoid **Array index out of range**
>>>>         errors in
>>>>             execution time.
>>>> 
>>>>             Here is my first draft for this proposal:
>>>> 
>>>>         https://github.com/luish/swift-evolution/blob/half-open-range-operator/proposals/nnnn-safer-half-open-range-operator.md
>>>> 
>>>>             In short, doing that in Swift causes a runtime error:
>>>> 
>>>>             leta =[1,2,3]
>>>>             letb =a[0..<5]
>>>>             print(b)
>>>> 
>>>>             > Error running code:
>>>>             > fatal error: Array index out of range
>>>> 
>>>>             The proposed solution is to slice the array returning all
>>>>         elements that
>>>>             are below the half-open operator, even though the number of
>>>>         elements is
>>>>             lesser than the ending of the half-open operator. So the
>>>>         example above
>>>>             would return [1,2,3].
>>>>             We can see this very behaviour in other languages, such as
>>>>         Python and
>>>>             Ruby as shown in the proposal draft.
>>>> 
>>>>             This would eliminate the need for verifications on the array size
>>>>             before slicing it -- and consequently runtime errors in cases
>>>>         when the
>>>>             programmer didn't.
>>>> 
>>>>             Viewing that it is my very first proposal, any feedback will
>>>>         be helpful.
>>>> 
>>>>             Thanks!
>>>> 
>>>>             Luis Henrique Borges
>>>>             @luishborges
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
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>>>> 
>>>> 
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