[swift-evolution] [Pitch] Improve `init(repeating:count)`

[Adrian Zubarev]

This is a small pitch which I will abandon if there is not much appetite for such improvement. ;)

I would like to propose an improvement to an initializer of all collection types that provide: init(repeating repeatedValue: Element, count: Int).

This change is meant to support reference type initialization on each iteration of the internal for-loop rather than copying the same references n times.

The change would be really straightforward and should not break existing code, except that the behavior would change for class types.

Instead of:

init(repeating repeatedValue: Element, count: Int)

let threeViews = Array(repeating: UIView(), count: 3) // contains 1 view 3 times
we would have:

init(repeating repeatedValue: @autoclosure () -> Element, count: Int)

This simple change would allow us to construct an array of different objects instead of an array with n references to the same object.

let threeViews = Array(repeating: UIView(), count: 3) // contains 3 different views


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/attachments/20170817/876dfefd/attachment.html>