[swift-evolution] [Review] SE-0089: Renaming String.init<T>(_: T)

[Dave Abrahams]

on Fri May 20 2016, Kevin Ballard <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

> On Fri, May 20, 2016, at 05:14 PM, Dave Abrahams via swift-evolution wrote:
>> 
>> on Fri May 20 2016, Kevin Ballard <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>> 
>> > On Tue, May 17, 2016, at 08:32 PM, Chris Lattner via swift-evolution wrote:
>> >> 	* What is your evaluation of the proposal?
>
>> >
>> > I'm a little nervous about this change, because converting things to
>> > strings is a fairly basic operation and it should be immediately
>> > obvious how to do that. That said, the described issues are pretty
>> > bad, and I know I've had to carefully triple-check sometimes to make
>> > sure I was calling the right initializer. So I'm +1 on the idea.
>> >
>> > That said, I don't like the name String(printing:). As others have
>> > pointed out, it sounds like this is related to print(), but this
>> > initializer does not actually print anything, it just converts any
>> > value into a string. I also don't like String(describing:) because
>> > it's too long. This initializer should be easier to call than
>> > String(reflecting:). Also, in my experience this initializer is
>> > particularly useful with code of the form `someOpt.map(String.init)`,
>> > and saying `someOpt.map(String.init(describing:))` is annoyingly long.
>> >
>> > Given this, I'd like to suggest the simpler `String(from:)`. It's
>> > short and generic, and it makes sense as it creates a String from any
>> > value.
>> 
>> Not too bad.  I could live with it.
>
> 😀
>
>> > I'm also not a fan of Dave's suggestion of removing this initializer
>> > entirely in favor of "\(foo)".  This feels weird, and it also can't be
>> > turned into a first-class function value.
>> 
>>   { "\($0)" }
>> 
>> ?
>
> Good point. I think what I intended to express was you cannot refer to
> this operation by name anymore. Maybe not a big deal, but it feels
> weird.

Makes sense.

-- 
-Dave