[swift-evolution] Generic Subscripts

[Ben Cohen]

> On Jan 12, 2017, at 1:37 PM, Slava Pestov via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
>> Before I submit it, could someone let me know if adding generics to subscripts would influence the ABI? ( still feel pretty clueless in that area).
> 
> It won’t change the ABI of existing subscript calls, but if the standard library introduces new generic subscripts that replace older non-generic subscripts, it will impact ABI.
> 

Specifically, we currently have to have a _Hashable protocol that has a _toAnyHashable() method in order to implement Dictionary<AnyHashable,*> subscripting using concrete types as keys. A replacement subscript that was generic over all Hashable types would solve this more neatly, and would be source-compatible, but affects the ABI of the stdlib. 

https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/stdlib/public/core/Hashable.swift#L16

Generic subscripts would also make it easier to implement one-sided ranges e.g. 

	myCollection[i...] // slice from i to the end


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