[swift-evolution] RFC: didset and willset

[Michael Peternell]

Hi Erica,

"didset" and "willset" are outliers in the general rule that when combining multiple words into an identifier, that you should use camelCase. which rule is more important? I'd like to introduce a third rule: don't fix it if it isn't broken, or more mildly: if in doubt, keep it the way it is. or another one: embrace precedent.. "@IBOutlet" is also not all-lowercase, should it be changed too? I'd say no, because in objc it is called "IBOutlet" as well. Also, for my Apple Mail client, "didset" and "willset" are marked as typos, but "didSet" and "willSet" is okay :)

=> I vote for "didSet" and "willSet".

I think we should be more careful when trying to argue with "consistency". It sounds objective, when in reality it's often very subjective, because Immanuel Kant's imperative is ambiguous ;) there are multiple ways to be consistent. If you are saying that something is inconsistent, you either assert a specific rule of consistency (like "keywords are always lowercase"), or you must argue that there is no general/sane rule under which the individual parts of the system are consistent.

And for all the others who want to abolish didSet and willSet completely:
NO WAY! they are both useful and I even used them for real code. For example, from code in my bachelors thesis (it's about polygons):

    public var points: Array<CGPoint> = [] {
        didSet {
            _area = nil
            _centroid = nil
        }
    }

I want to cache the _area and _centroid of a polygon, because I'm going to use it many many times more often than I change points. I would have to rewrite that code to something like

    private var _points: Array<CGPoint> = []
    public var points {
        get {
            return _points
        }
        set {
            _area = nil
            _centroid = nil
            _points = newValue
        }
    }

That's not better, and it probably breaks the COW-optimization of the underlying array. (And don't tell me that my design is bad because I use "didSet", I really don't think so.)

-Michael

> Am 18.05.2016 um 17:09 schrieb Erica Sadun via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org>:
> 
> didSet and willSet remain outliers in the general rule of conjoined lowercase keywords. Is there any support for bringing these outliers into the fold?
> 
> -- E, going through her "ttd notes" this morning
> 
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