[swift-evolution] [Pre-proposal] Replace [Foo] With CollectionType

[Dave Abrahams]

On May 24, 2016, at 9:35 PM

on Tue May 24 2016, Matthew Johnson <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

> , Austin Zheng
> <austinzheng at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     On Tue, May 24, 2016 at 4:24 PM, Brent Royal-Gordon
>     <brent at architechies.com> wrote:
>
>     > I’m not sure what you mean about introducing type unsafely.
>
>         What I mean is that once you do this:
>
>         let x: AnyCollection<Character> = myArrayOfCharacters
>         let y: AnyCollection<Character> = myString.characters
>
>         Both `x` and `y` have indices of type `Any<Comparable>`, and will now
>         accept each others' indices:
>
>         for i in x.indices {
>         print(y[i]) // Oops!
>         }
>
>         If this rule:
>
>         > The generalized existentials proposal goes out of its way to be
>         explicit about the fact that only type safe operations would be visible
>         through the existential.
>
>         Is trying to say that this isn't the case because APIs using the
>         collection's `Index` are not exposed on an `AnyCollection`, well, then
>         I'm not sure what `AnyCollection` is actually supposed to be used for.
>
>     If there's any way that the rules that I've proposed can be relaxed without
>     sacrificing type safety, I would love to hear it. I think the difference in
>     'power' in this regard between a function that uses generic types and a
>     function that uses existentials is something inherent to how each works,
>     though.
>
> The primary difference is the freedom to accept an index which is invalid and
> call fatalError when you get it. We don't want existentials to do something
> that. But with user-defined types we have the flexibility to do that if we
> decide it is the right design.

I'm not sure I agree that Existentials shouldn't do that.  The amount of
boilerplate one needs to construct a user-defined simulation of an
existential in these cases can be prohibitive.  Why shouldn't the
compiler handle it for us?

-- 
Dave