[swift-evolution] [Draft] Change @noreturn to unconstructible return type

[Антон Жилин]

I'll talk about how "bottom" mechanic works there. (I'm not a Haskell
expert, but I'll at least try ;) )

Firstly, there is a Void type in standard library, which is exactly what
 enum Never {}  in Swift is.
Pretty trivial: it is useful as a parameter of higher kinded types, e.g.
Either.

Then, there is bottom. Long story short, each type in Haskell includes an
undefined (bottom, _|_) value. That corresponds to partially defined
functions in set theory.

Example 1: Integer -> Integer  function can either return a Z number, or be
undefined at that input (return bottom)
Example 2: ()  type actually contains two elements: () and _|_
Example 3: Void  contains one element: _|_

Bottom value results in an error on most occasions.

What does returning Void mean? In set theory, set of  Integer -> Void  is
an empty set. In type theory,  Integer -> Void  can contain a single
element that returns bottom.

Applying that to Swift, we express bottom value by not returning on a
particular input (due to a crash or an infinite loop). We are going to
express bottom type by Never (or aliases). The only way to return bottom
type is as well going to be returning bottom value (in Swift meaning).

There is also such a function in Haskell:  absurd :: forall a. Void -> a
Of course, it just returns bottom value of type a. The philosophy of this
is "from false follows anything" or like, "if we are going to crash, then
we can do anything".
Based on this, we can implement conversions from Void to any type in Swift.
It would look like:

func implementContract() -> Int {
    return fatalError("unimplemented")
}

`return` is crucial here.
This is what I suggest to change in the proposal.

- Anton
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/attachments/20160608/1e2c3262/attachment.html>