[swift-evolution] Optional comparison operators

[Mark Lacey]

> On Jul 12, 2016, at 12:16 AM, Jacob Bandes-Storch <jtbandes at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Okay, I guess it's fair that (T, T?) and (T?, T) overloads should have to be a separate proposal.
> 
> My personal motivation is mostly anecdotal; I've found them quite useful, and I wouldn't say they're uncommon.

Sure, I mean uncommon in the sense that in the projects I’ve looked at I’m seeing them perhaps once every 1,000-2,000 lines of commented code, not uncommon in the sense that you will almost never see them in practice. I’m sure for some projects it’s going to be much more often than others.

Mark

> Some use cases off the top of my head:
> - checking whether a dictionary contains a particular value for a key
> - checking whether an optional ivar (such as "selectedIndex: Int?") contains a particular value ("if tappedIndex == selectedIndex”)
> 
> Jacob
> 
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 12:09 AM, Mark Lacey <mark.lacey at apple.com <mailto:mark.lacey at apple.com>> wrote:
> 
>> On Jul 11, 2016, at 11:55 PM, Jacob Bandes-Storch <jtbandes at gmail.com <mailto:jtbandes at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Mark,
>> Thanks for writing this up. Just to clarify, will these still work if your proposal is implemented?
>> 
>>     let x: Int?
>>     let y: Int
>>     struct NotEquatable {}
>>     let z: NotEquatable?
>> 
>>     x == y; x != y
>>     x == nil; x != nil
>>     z == nil; z != nil
>> 
>> I would hope that these continue to work. If any changes need to be made to ensure that, please make sure they're included in the proposal too.
> 
> The last four would work, but the first two (x == y and x != y) would not because they still involve coercing y to an optional.
> 
> Similarly, === and !== on reference types where one is an optional would require coercing one side, and would not be accepted without an explicit cast using Optional().
> 
> I’m curious what the motivation is for further special casing these operators. They do occur more in practice than <, <=, >, >= (in fact most of the source updates I had to make were due to === and !==, with == and != a close second), but overall these are still quite uncommon from what I’ve seen.
> 
> If you’d like I can certainly update the “alternatives considered” to include the suggestion that we add overloads for (T, T?) and (T?, T) for those four operators.
> 
> Mark
> 
>> 
>> Jacob
>> 
>> On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 9:35 PM, Mark Lacey <mark.lacey at apple.com <mailto:mark.lacey at apple.com>> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Jul 11, 2016, at 9:12 PM, Chris Lattner via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Jul 11, 2016, at 8:14 PM, Jacob Bandes-Storch via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> You'd have to unwrap it, or use the ??/==/!= operators: https://gist.github.com/jtbandes/9d88cc83ceceb6c62f38 <https://gist.github.com/jtbandes/9d88cc83ceceb6c62f38>
>>>> 
>>>> I'd be okay with </<=/>/>= returning Bool?, as I suggested in an older email (which somehow didn't make it to gmane's archive, but it's quoted in some other messages <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.swift.evolution/10095>). I think it would be more convenient in some cases than unwrapping the individual values before comparing them.
>>> 
>>> I’d be strongly opposed to those operator returning “Bool?”.  Doing so would prevent conforming to Comparable and would be extremely surprising.
>>> 
>>> -Chris
>> 
>> I just pushed the current draft of the proposal: https://github.com/rudkx/swift-evolution/blob/eliminate-value-to-optional-coercion/proposals/0000-disallow-value-to-optional-coercion-in-operator-arguments.md <https://github.com/rudkx/swift-evolution/blob/eliminate-value-to-optional-coercion/proposals/0000-disallow-value-to-optional-coercion-in-operator-arguments.md>
>> 
>> I haven’t addressed removal of the ordered comparison operators. I suspect this should be a separate proposal, but I can roll that into this one if it’s desired.
>> 
>> I’ll update the proposal as the discussion continues until it’s selected for review.
>> 
>> Mark
>> 
>>> 
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>> 
>> 
> 
> 

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