[swift-evolution] MemoryLayout for a value

[Anton Zhilin]

2016-08-04 10:31 GMT+03:00 Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution <
swift-evolution at swift.org>:

> On Thu, Aug 4, 2016 at 2:29 AM, Karl <razielim at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It’s confusing because metatypes in Swift are pretty confusing in
>> general: Int.self returns Int.Type which is not the same as `type(of: <some
>> Int>)` (that would be Int).
>>
>> If a novice wants to jump in, they’ll have to know that MemoryLayout(of:
>> Int.self) would return a MemoryLayout<Int.Type>.
>>
>
> Yes, here, I agree Dave is absolutely right. You and Dave have convinced
> me that neither `MemoryLayout(of: x)` nor `MemoryLayout.of(x)`, where x is
> an instance, would be appropriate.
>

Two weeks ago Adrian and I suggested adding dynamic 'size', 'stride',
'alignment' to Mirror, which definition would look like:

public struct Mirror {
    internal metatype_: Any.Type

    public init<T>(_: T.Type)

    public var size: Int { get }
    public var stride: Int { get }
    public var align: Int { get }

    // ...
}

There are some problems with it right now, but I do believe that reflection
API is where dynamic `size`, `stride`, `alignment` belong.
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