[swift-evolution] [Pitch] Add the DefaultConstructible protocol to the standard library

[Xiaodi Wu]

On Mon, Dec 26, 2016 at 2:27 PM, Adam Nemecek via swift-evolution <
swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

> The elements already have an Identity, the one that you get when you
> invoke the default constructor. It's 0 for Int, "" for String.
>

Please don't do this. Dave has already confirmed that `init()` makes no
semantic guarantees as to the value returned. It _happens_ to be the case
that Int() == 0. That does _not_ mean that semantically `Int.init()`
provides the identity element for Int.


On Mon, Dec 26, 2016 at 11:24 AM, David Sweeris <davesweeris at mac.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Dec 26, 2016, at 11:12, Tino Heth via swift-evolution <
>> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>>
>> There is an older discussion that is somewhat linked to this topic:
>> "Removing the empty initialiser requirement from
>> RangeReplaceableCollection"
>> https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-
>> Mon-20160704/023642.html
>>
>> Imho "DefaultConstructible" types can be very handy, but so far, it seems
>> no one has presented a single use case that is important enough to justify
>> the inclusion in the stdlib.
>> On the other hand, I'm quite sure that there's much functionality in the
>> stdlib that many people consider as superfluous…
>>
>> I guess adding the protocol wouldn't have a big impact on size, so for
>> for me, the question is "Does this protocol confuse users of Swift?", which
>> I'd answer with "yes, possibly" (unless someone comes up with a name that
>> is more intuitive).
>>
>>
>> "Identity", but, at least for many numeric types, you'd need a mechanism
>> for specifying which one you mean.
>>
>> - Dave Sweeris
>>
>
>
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