[swift-evolution] Strings in Swift 4

[Maxim Veksler]

Please see discussion inline.

On Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 1:09 PM Jeremy Pereira <
jeremy.j.pereira at googlemail.com> wrote:

>
> > On 20 Jan 2017, at 10:30, Maxim Veksler via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> >
> > One ask - make string interpolation great again?
> >
> > Taking from examples supplied at
> https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/StringManifesto.md#string-interpolation
> >
> > "Column 1: \(n.format(radix:16, width:8)) *** \(message)"
> >
> > Why not use:
> >
> > "Column 1: ${n.format(radix:16, width:8)} *** $message"
> >
> > Which for my preference makes the syntax feel more readable, avoids the
> "double ))" in terms of string interpolation termination and function
> termination points. And if that's not enough brings the "feel" of the
> language to be scriptable in nature common in bash, sh, zsh and co..
> scripting interpreters and has been adopted as part of ES6 interpolation
> syntax[1].
> >
>
> This idea came up once before on Swift Evo. The arguments against are:
>
> 1. Swift already has an “escape” character for inserting non literal stuff
> into strings - the “\” character. Either you have two - increasing
> complexity for both the developer and the Swift compiler’s tokeniser - or
> you have to change everything that uses “\” to use $ e.g. $t $n instead of
> \t \n.
>
>
I would claim that this serves as an reinforcement of making the
distinctions. "\t" is not the same behavior as "\(someVariable)" both
conceptually - I think there is a clear distinction between inserting a
"constant symbol" to inserting "the string content of a variable" and
semantically - While you would use \t to insert a tab you are mandated by
the semantics to use \( .. ) to insert the contents of a variable.


> 2. The dollar sign is a disastrous symbol to use for an special character,
> especially in the USA where it is commonly used to signify the local
> currency. Yes, I know it is used for interpolation in Perl, Shell and
> Javascript and others,  but “this other language I like does X, therefore
> Swift should do X” is not a good argument.
>
>
Please name concrete examples? I would believe that the case for
$variableName to be rare enough to justify expecting the developer to make
an escape claim with \$variableName, likewise for ${variableName}, if
expected output is plain text I wouldn't imagine this "\$\{variableName\}"
to be a far reaching expectation.

The use of $ symbol is more reaching[1], and is being adopted constantly as
the selected patten for even recent developments as Facebook's GraphQL
query syntax[2] which to the best of my knowledge was invented in US.

3. There is already quite a lot of code that uses \( … ) for interpolation,
> this would be a massive breaking change.
>
>
True, but going forward that would enable a "better readable" code for
larger number of users. Additionally I would suggest that automatic
conversion using Swift Migration Assistant should be possible.
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