[swift-evolution] [Pitch] Removing the empty initialiser requirement from RangeReplaceableCollection

[Dave Abrahams]

on Thu Jul 07 2016, Haravikk <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

>> On 7 Jul 2016, at 15:57, Karl via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>> 
>> I believe the idea of RRC is that all you need to implement is the
>> empty initialiser and replaceSubrange(), and everything else
>> (e.g. Append, insert) is implemented in terms of those. Even the
>
>> initialiser which takes existing collection just initialises and
>> empty one and appends the existing collection (I.e. Calling
>> replaceSubrange).
>> 
>> If I understand you correctly, it will not be possible to initialise
>> a generic RRC any more, will it? Because that RRC may need
>> additional information (e.g. A maximum buffer size if it stores its
>> data in multiple discrete buffers) which you can’t provide
>> generically.
>> 
>> Maybe we could have a true copy-constructor instead? That is,
>> replace init<C:Collection>(_:) with init(_: Self), so that it could
>> take any additional arguments from that other instance?
>
> A copying initialiser could work, but it should probably have a
> parameter for the type of copy to create (empty, shallow copy and deep
> copy for example), as I suspect it's the empty copy that
> RangeReplaceableCollection needs more than anything. Otherwise it
> shouldn't need initialisers on the protocol. This however is something
> that could (and should) be moved out into its own protocol I think,
> with RangeReplaceableCollection simply conforming that.

Maybe RRC should have:

      func emptyCopy() -> Self

?
-- 
Dave