[swift-evolution] [Pitch] Rename protocol<> to Any<>

[Austin Zheng]

I think this is a good idea - the implementation of Any ( = Any<>) should not be specified to be a typealias. (And this would resolve the idea Colin brought up.)

To David's points (to avoid clogging up the list):

- 'Any' is still valid, and has the same meaning as it did before.
- 'Any<>' should be allowed. You can currently use 'protocol<>' in your code instead of 'Any'.
- 'Any<Any>' behaves exactly the same as 'protocol<Any>' today, which is just 'Any'.
- There are at least two proposals floating around the list that expand how 'Any<>' can be used. 'protocol<>' is sort of a weird Swift construct with no good equivalents elsewhere in the language, and I don't know if it would be strictly correct to call 'protocol' a keyword in this case.

Austin

> On May 18, 2016, at 10:52 PM, Brent Royal-Gordon <brent at architechies.com> wrote:
> 
>> Swift 3.0 focuses on making breaking changes that prepare the way for features to be introduced in future releases. In that spirit, I would like to solicit feedback on a very simple proposal: renaming 'protocol<>' to 'Any<>', as described in the 'Completing Generics' manifesto.
>> 
>> The proposal can be found here: https://github.com/austinzheng/swift-evolution/blob/az-protocol-to-any/proposals/XXXX-any-as-existential.md
> 
> One small thing:
> 
>> Any<> should be typealiased to Any.
> 
> 
> I'm not sure if it's better to specify that this should be a typealias, or simply that `Any` without angle brackets is equivalent to `Any<>`. I worry a little about whether Swift might have trouble parsing `Any<Foo>` if there's an `Any` typealias lying around.
> 
> -- 
> Brent Royal-Gordon
> Architechies
>