[swift-evolution] Returning nothing

[Xiaodi Wu]

Quite frankly, I think the ship has long sailed for renaming Void.


On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 11:52 AM, Matthew Johnson via swift-evolution <
swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> > On Jul 21, 2016, at 11:42 AM, Daniel Steinberg via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> >
> > This may be a silly question - given that one of Swift’s design
> principles is to be a language for new programmers and for APIs to read
> like English phrases, should we replace the typealias of Void for the
> return type () with Nothing.
>
> Nothing was one of the names considered for the bottom type that replaces
> @noreturn (
> https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0102-noreturn-bottom-type.md).
> I think it would be confusing to rename Void to Nothing.
>
> If we consider renaming it Unit is the obvious way to go (
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_type)
>
> >
> > So
> >
> > f: ( input: Int) -> Void
> >
> > becomes
> >
> > f: ( input: Int) -> Nothing
> >
> > Instead of saying “f takes an Int and returns a Void” I read this as “f
> takes an Int and returns nothing”.
> >
> > I’ve been using f:(input: Int) -> () because it’s easier to explain than
> Void to non-experienced programmers. Experienced programmers have no
> problem with Void. But Void seems to be something we’re using just because
> we have for a while - like x++ and C-style for loops.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Daniel
> > _______________________________________________
> > swift-evolution mailing list
> > swift-evolution at swift.org
> > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
>
> _______________________________________________
> swift-evolution mailing list
> swift-evolution at swift.org
> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/attachments/20160721/0386cf99/attachment.html>