[swift-evolution] Swift's Optional Int as NSNumber in Objective-C

[Kenny Leung]

But my argument *is* that optionality is an obvious way to make that decision.

If I was writing in pure Objective-C (outside the context of Swift), sometimes I would have methods that take or return int, and sometimes I would have methods that take or return NSNumber. There is never really a surprise as to why. So why would there be a surprise when bridging from Swift?

-Kenny


> On May 15, 2017, at 7:24 AM, T.J. Usiyan <griotspeak at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The argument is not about whether or not it should come through as an object. The argument is about the fact that *sometimes* it would come through as an object and other times it would not. Optionality isn't an obvious way to make that decision.
> 
> TJ
> 
> On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 3:03 PM, Charlie Monroe <charlie at charliemonroe.net <mailto:charlie at charliemonroe.net>> wrote:
> This is not much of an argument given that NSString is an object in ObjC (heap-allocated), String in Swift is an struct and also given that most NSNumber's nowadays are not really allocated, but just tagged pointers.
> 
> Given that NSNumber is immutable, you get the value semantics anyway...
> 
>> On May 15, 2017, at 1:09 PM, T.J. Usiyan via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> My understanding of the reasoning is that `NSNumber` is an object in Objective-C and not a struct. There is already one level of decision when translating to objc in that regard. Switching between reference semantics/class and value semantics because of optionality is surprising.
>> 
>> On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 5:52 AM, Kenny Leung via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>> > On May 12, 2017, at 9:56 AM, John McCall via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>> 
>> > Exporting Int? as an optional NSNumber does not feel obvious and idiomatic when we would export Int as NSInteger.  It feels like reaching for an arbitrary solution.
>> 
>> I don’t understand this reasoning. I’ve had cause to distinguish 0 from null in both Objective-C and Java, and I would do exactly the same thing.
>> 
>> -Kenny
>> 
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