[swift-evolution] Returning nothing

[Matthew Johnson]

> On Jul 21, 2016, at 11:59 AM, Xiaodi Wu <xiaodi.wu at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Quite frankly, I think the ship has long sailed for renaming Void.

Agree.  I’m not advocating change, just stating things that should be considered if anyone wants to propose it.

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