[swift-evolution] Pitch: Compound name `foo(:)` for nullary functions

[Jacob Bandes-Storch]

There were some opinions on Slack that we should simply change `foo` so
that it can *only* refer to the nullary version.

That'd be a source-breaking change, but I'm also not sure whether it's even
solve the problem — is it true you might still have both a function and a
variable named foo accessible in the same scope?
On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 11:48 AM David Sweeris <davesweeris at mac.com> wrote:

>
> > On Feb 22, 2017, at 11:05 AM, Matthew Johnson <matthew at anandabits.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> On Feb 22, 2017, at 12:30 PM, David Sweeris <davesweeris at mac.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> On Feb 22, 2017, at 7:48 AM, Matthew Johnson via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I like this idea.  I think you made the right choice of syntax given
> the alternatives considered.  To me `foo(_)` and `foo(:)` equally imply
> presence of an argument.  The former looks like an anonymous (unnamed)
> argument and the latter includes the colon which only follows an argument.
> Between the two `foo(:)` is the better choice because it doesn’t look like
> a pattern as has been pointed out.
> >>>
> >>> I’m going to do a little brainstorming to try and come up with
> something that works and doesn’t imply an argument at all but suspect I’ll
> come up empty handed.
> >>
> >> What about “foo(Void)”? It might be fairly easily confused with
> “foo(:Void)”, but in practice, how likely is it for someone to declare both
> `foo()` and `foo(_: Void)`?
> >
> > I almost threw out `foo(Void)` and `foo(Never)` as ideas.  There is at
> least one problem with these.  We will hopefully eventually get rid of the
> need to say `.self` in expressions like `Int.self`.  If we are able to do
> that then `foo(Void)` and `foo(Never)` are syntactically valid function
> calls.
>
> Oh, good point! Hrmm… “foo(#null)”/“foo(#nullary)"? I can’t imagine either
> of those would ever be valid function calls, and they get the point across
> (the later more than the former, but it’s more to type). I don’t like that
> syntax for the name of “shortest” version of the function isn’t shorter
> than the syntax of the name for other versions of the function, though.
>
> - Dave Sweeris
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