[swift-evolution] protocol-oriented integers (take 2)

[Karl Wagner]

Really glad to see this coming back :)

I have a couple of questions:

1) How does Strideable relate to Arithmetic?

My understanding is that Strideable allows non-numeric types to express different-type addition and subtraction, and that Arithmetic is for numeric types only (derives from ExpressibleByIntegerLiteral) and allows then to express same-type operations. Is that correct? If so, it would be nice to add it to the proposal so people know when they should conform (or set their generic constraints) to one or the other.

2) Can SignedNumber get some operators now?

Strideable.Stride is bound to this weird protocol ‘SignedNumber’. You can create instances of it out of thin air via an integer literal, but you can’t accumulate Strides to find the overall distance between some adjacent Strideables. 


Also, #1 is why I don’t like the Strideable operator deprecation being part of the proposal (and therefore part of the language specification). It doesn’t solve the underlying issue, which is that our integer literal protocols aren’t really good enough - they’re not useful enough outside the standard library (see: https://bugs.swift.org/browse/SR-920), and evidently the compiler isn’t able to use them to infer types correctly. Perhaps fixing it is a low priority, and that’s fine, but what about if somebody else defines this operator in their library? They start of break lots of valid code because the compiler can’t do the right thing. Improved literal protocols may be the better way to resolve that problem.

- Karl