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

[Xiaodi Wu]

What happens when you need the backticks for the function name itself? We
can't nest them.


On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 08:16 Ben Rimmington via swift-evolution <
swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

>
> On 22 Feb 2017, at 07:05, Jacob Bandes-Storch wrote:
>
> *Compound name syntax* — foo(_:), foo(bar:), foo(bar:baz:) — is used to
> disambiguate references to functions. (You might've used it inside a
> #selector expression.) But there's currently no compound name for a
> function with no arguments.
>
>     func foo() {}  // no compound syntax for this one :(
>     func foo(_ bar: Int) {}  // foo(_:)
>     func foo(bar: Int) {}  // foo(bar:)
>     func foo(bar: String, baz: Double) {}  // foo(bar:baz:)
>
> Given these four functions, only the first one has no compound name
> syntax. And the simple reference "let myfn = foo" is ambiguous because it
> could refer to any of the four. A workaround is to specify a contextual
> type, e.g. "let myfn = foo as () -> Void".
>
> I filed SR-3550 <https://bugs.swift.org/browse/SR-3550> for this a while
> ago, and there was some discussion in JIRA about it. I'd like to continue
> exploring solutions here and then write up a formal proposal.
>
>
> Would the following be an option?
>
> foo()  // Function call expression.
> `foo()` // Function reference (using backticks).
>
> -- Ben
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