[swift-evolution] Class and Subclass Existentials (Round 2)

[Hooman Mehr]

> On Feb 14, 2017, at 1:24 AM, Slava Pestov via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
>> 3. When a protocol composition type contains a typealias, the validity of the type is determined using the following steps:
>> 
>> Expand the typealias
>> Normalize the type by removing duplicate constraints and replacing less specific constraints by more specific constraints (a class constraint is less specific than a class type constraint, which is less specific than a constraint of a subclass of that class).
>> Check that the type does not contain two class-type constraints
> 
> You could generalize this and instead say that if the type contains two class-type constraints, the resulting existential type is the common base class of the two classes, or AnyObject if they do not share a common base class.
> 

Why would we do that? They are called constraints, and we use “&” between them. They should move towards the more specific subclass, not the less restrained base class. So, I would say:

If the type contains two class-type constraints, it is only acceptable if one class constrain is a subclass of the other and the resulting constrain will be the subclass.

 
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