[swift-evolution] Rekindling: "Extending declaration scope to condition for `repeat { } while ()"

[Xiaodi Wu]

If I recall correctly, it was discussed during a time when additive
proposals were not in scope, so it could not be proposed. Since at the
moment we are currently between Swift 4 and Swift 5 evolution, the topic is
not in scope either.

With respect to the idea itself, Taras's post--which appears to be the last
on the subject--is useful to re-consider here:

> This is definitively something very useful but it also introduces a
strong asymmetry into Swift statements. In all control-flow statements, the
condition is part of the outer scope. Or, to be more precise, its part of
an intermediate scope between the outer and the inner scope (as you can
declare variables in the condition which are invisible to the outer scope
but visible to the inner scope). Your suggestion essentially moves the
condition of repeat {} while () to the inner scope. I think that the more
complex semantics is not worth the change.

I recall being initially in favor of the idea myself. However, any sort of
change of syntax is a big deal; it will prompt a lot of bikeshedding, and
it will require engineering effort to implement that is sorely needed
elsewhere. With time, I question whether this idea meets the necessarily
high bar for changing syntax; indeed if the motivation is to keep something
from the outer scope, it's trivial to make this happen with an outer `do`:

```
do {
  var i = 0
  repeat {
    // ...
  } while i < 42
}
```


On Tue, Jun 6, 2017 at 4:05 AM, Michael Savich via swift-evolution <
swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:

> It recently occurred to me how nice it would be to be if we could avoid
> declaring variables outside of loops that are only used inside them. I used
> google’s site specific search (is that the canon way to search swift-evo?)
> and only found one thread about this, (https://lists.swift.org/
> pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20160718/024657.html) where from
> what I could see it got a positive reception.
>
> It would be a special case though, and within an unrelated thread I saw
> this suggestion (https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/
> Week-of-Mon-20151207/001201.html) of letting you write a variable
> declaration in between the repeat keyword and the opening bracket.
> Personally I prefer this syntax.
>
> Regardless, I’m wondering what happened to this thread? Is there a reason
> it didn’t get proposed? If the answer is that the discussion simply died
> down it may be worth revisiting it.
>
> Sent from my Mac
>
>
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