[swift-evolution] pure functions

[Andrew Trick]

> On Aug 18, 2017, at 2:45 PM, David Sweeris via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
> 
> If we define our semantics carefully enough, could we realistically make it so that "@pure" or "@impure" (or whatever) would simply be a note to the compiler, letting it skip that bit of analysis for the function in question?
> 
> 
> 
>> The secondary concern is that you need to build out the model enough that you don’t prevent abstractions.  A pure function should be able to create an instance of a struct, mutate it (i.e. calling non-pure functions) etc.  This requires a non-trivial design, and as the design complexity creeps, you run the risk of it getting out of control.
> 
> Did we ever get around to figuring which definition(s) of "pure" that we wanted to support, or did the discussion always get out of scope before we got that far? I know the issue's been brought up, but I don't recall if it was discussed enough to reach any conclusions.

It became clear that we weren’t going to change Swift’s default semantics in the version 2/3 timeframe, and we made the effort to do sufficient whole-module analysis to make up for it. I see this primarily being a resilience issue in the future. Eventually I think we’ll want public APIs to be able to declare some level of statically enforced purity. We might even get some level of default guarantee as a way of “deprecating global var”. But that whole discussion has rightly been punted.

-Andy
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/attachments/20170818/5e4ee432/attachment.html>