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

[Erica Sadun]

What people are doing is taking a real set of values (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, for example), then discarding them via `_ in`, which is different from `Void -> T` or `f(x) = 0 * x`. The domain could just as easily be (Foo(), "b", 💩,  UIColor.red, { x: Int in x^x }). There are too many semantic shifts away from "I would like to collect the execution of this closure n times" for it to sit comfortably.

-- E


> On Aug 17, 2017, at 3:53 PM, Xiaodi Wu <xiaodi.wu at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> This is, I would argue, much too limiting in the way of semantics and not at all required by “map”. It’s unclear to me how _any_ result with reference semantics or any function with side effects could be used in a way that comports with that definition.
> 
> On the other hand, just as y = 0x is a function, { _ in Foo() } is a closure that very much does project from a domain to a range. I’m not sure I understand what wins are to be had by having “collect {}” as a synonym for “map { _ in }”.
> 
> On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 16:01 Erica Sadun via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
> 
>> On Aug 17, 2017, at 12:04 PM, Max Moiseev <moiseev at apple.com <mailto:moiseev at apple.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On Aug 17, 2017, at 10:05 AM, Erica Sadun via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Also, for those of you here who haven't heard my previous rant on the subject, I dislike using map for generating values that don't depend on transforming a domain to a range. (It has been argued that `_ in` is mapping from `Void`, but I still dislike it immensely)
>> 
>> Can you please elaborate why (or maybe point me at the rant)? 
> 
> 
> Summary:
> 
> . Since this application is a generator and not a transformative function, `map` is a misfit to usage semantics. It breaks the contract that map means to project from a domain to a range via a function. More languages conventionally use `collect` than `map` to collect n applications of a generator closure
> 
> -- E
> 
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