[swift-evolution] [Draft] Rename Sequence.elementsEqual

[Xiaodi Wu]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 14:21 Thorsten Seitz <tseitz42 at icloud.com> wrote:

> Am 16.10.2017 um 16:20 schrieb Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org>:
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 05:48 Jonathan Hull <jhull at gbis.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Oct 15, 2017, at 9:58 PM, Xiaodi Wu <xiaodi.wu at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 15, 2017 at 8:51 PM, Jonathan Hull <jhull at gbis.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Oct 14, 2017, at 10:48 PM, Xiaodi Wu <xiaodi.wu at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>  That ordering can be arbitrary, but it shouldn’t leak internal
>>>>> representation such that the method used to create identical things affects
>>>>> the outcome of generic methods because of differences in internal
>>>>> representation.
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>  It would be better to say that the iteration order is well-defined.
>>>>>> That will almost always mean documented, and usually predictable though
>>>>>> obviously e.g. RNGs and iterating in random order will not be predictable
>>>>>> by design.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> That's actually more semantically constrained than what Swift calls
>>>>>>> a `Collection` (which requires conforming types to be multi-pass and(?)
>>>>>>> finite). By contrast, Swift's `SpongeBob` protocol explicitly permits
>>>>>>> conforming single-pass, infinite, and/or unordered types.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I think you’re talking about Sequence here, I’ve lost track of your
>>>>>>> nonsense by now. Yes, the current Swift protocol named Sequence allows
>>>>>>> unordered types. You seem to keep asserting that but not actually
>>>>>>> addressing my argument, which is *that allowing Sequences to be
>>>>>>> unordered with the current API is undesired and actively harmful, and
>>>>>>> should* *therefore** be changed*.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What is harmful about it?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> After thinking about it, I think the harmful bit is that unordered
>>>>>> sequences are leaking internal representation (In your example, this is
>>>>>> causing people to be surprised when two sets with identical elements are
>>>>>> generating different sequences/orderings based on how they were created).
>>>>>> You are correct when you say that this problem is even true for for-in.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I would not say it is a problem. Rather, by definition, iteration
>>>>> involves retrieving one element after another; if you're allowed to do that
>>>>> with Set, then the elements of a Set are observably ordered in some way.
>>>>> Since it's not an OrderedSet--i.e., order doesn't matter--then the only
>>>>> sensible conclusion is that the order of elements obtained in a for...in
>>>>> loop must be arbitrary. If you think this is harmful, then you must believe
>>>>> that one should be prohibited from iterating over an instance of Set.
>>>>> Otherwise, Set is inescapably a Sequence by the Swift definition of
>>>>> Sequence. All extension methods on Sequence like drop(while:) are really
>>>>> just conveniences for common things that you can do with iterated access;
>>>>> to my mind, they're essentially just alternative ways of spelling various
>>>>> for...in loops.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I think an argument could be made that you shouldn’t be able to
>>>>> iterate over a set without first defining an ordering on it (even if that
>>>>> ordering is somewhat arbitrary).  Maybe we have something like a
>>>>> “Sequenc(e)able” protocol which defines things which can be turned into a
>>>>> sequence when combined with some sort of ordering.  One possible ordering
>>>>> could be the internal representation (At least in that case we are calling
>>>>> it out specifically).  If I had to say
>>>>> “setA.arbitraryOrder.elementsEqual(setB.arbitraryOrder)” I would definitely
>>>>> be less surprised when it returns false even though setA == setB.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Well, that's a totally different direction, then; you're arguing that
>>>> `Set` and `Dictionary` should not conform to `Sequence` altogether. That's
>>>> fine (it's also a direction that some of us explored off-list a while ago),
>>>> but at this point in Swift's evolution, realistically, it's not within the
>>>> realm of possible changes.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I am actually suggesting something slightly different.  Basically, Set
>>>> and Dictionary’s conformance to Collection would have a different
>>>> implementation.  They would conform to another protocol declaring that they
>>>> are unordered. That protocol would fill in part of the conformance to
>>>> sequence/collection using a default ordering, which is mostly arbitrary,
>>>> but guaranteed to produce the same ordering for the same list of elements
>>>> (even across collection types).  This would be safer, but a tiny bit slower
>>>> than what we have now (We could also potentially develop a way for
>>>> collections like set to amortize the cost). For those who need to recover
>>>> speed, the new protocol would also define a property which quickly returns
>>>> a sequence/iterator using the internal ordering (I arbitrarily called it
>>>> .arbitraryOrder).
>>>>
>>>> I believe it would not be source breaking.
>>>>
>>>
>>> That is indeed something slightly different.
>>>
>>> In an ideal world--and my initial understanding of what you were
>>> suggesting--Set and Dictionary would each have a member like `collection`,
>>> which would expose the underlying data as a `SetCollection` or
>>> `DictionaryCollection` that in turn would conform to `Collection`;
>>> meanwhile, Set and Dictionary themselves would not offer methods such as
>>> `prefix`, or indexing by subscript, which are not compatible with being
>>> unordered. For those who want a particular ordering, there'd be something
>>> like `collection(ordered areInIncreasingOrder: (T, T) -> Bool) ->
>>> {Set|Dictionary}Collection`.
>>>
>>> What you suggest here instead would be minimally source-breaking.
>>> However, I'm unsure of where these guarantees provide benefit to justify
>>> the performance cost. Certainly not for `first` or `dropFirst(_:)`, which
>>> still yields an arbitrary result which doesn't make sense for something
>>> _unordered_. We *could* have an underscored customization point named
>>> something like `_customOrderingPass` that is only invoked from
>>> `elementsEqual` or other such methods to pre-rearrange the internal
>>> ordering of unordered collections in some deterministic way before
>>> comparison. Is that what you have in mind?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Something like that.  Whatever we do, there will be a tradeoff between
>>> speed, correctness, and ergonomics.
>>>
>>> My suggestion trades speed for correctness, and provides a way to
>>> recover speed through additional typing (which is slightly less ergonomic).
>>>
>>
>> You haven't convinced me that this is at all improved in "correctness."
>> It trades one arbitrary iteration order for another on a type that tries to
>> model an unordered collection.
>>
>>
>>> We could do something like you suggest. I don’t think the method would
>>> need to be underscored… the ordering pass could just be a method on the
>>> protocol which defines it as unordered.  Then we could provide a special
>>> conformance for things where order really matters based on adherence to
>>> that protocol.  That might be an acceptable tradeoff.  It would give us
>>> speed at the cost of having the correct implementation being less ergonomic
>>> and more error prone (you have to remember to check that it is unordered
>>> and call the ordering method when it mattered).
>>>
>>> I’d still be a bit worried that people would make incorrect generic
>>> algorithms based on expecting an order from unordered things, but at least
>>> it would be possible for them check and handle it correctly.  I think I
>>> could get behind that tradeoff/compromise, given where we are in the swift
>>> process and Swift's obsession with speed (though I still slightly prefer
>>> the safer default).  At least the standard library would handle all the
>>> things correctly, and that is what will affect the majority of programmers.
>>>
>>
>> What is an example of such an "incorrect" generic algorithm that would be
>> made correct by such a scheme?
>>
>>
>> To start with, the one you gave as an example at the beginning of this
>> discussion: Two sets with identical elements which have different internal
>> storage and thus give different orderings as sequences.  You yourself have
>> argued that the confusion around this is enough of a problem that we need
>> to make a source-breaking change (renaming it) to warn people that the
>> results of the ‘elementsEqual’ algorithm are undefined for sets and
>> dictionaries.
>>
>
> No, I am arguing that the confusion about ‘elementsEqual’ is foremost a
> problem with its name; the result of this operation is not at all undefined
> for two sets but actually clearly defined: it returns true if two sets have
> the same elements in the same iteration order, which is a publicly
> observable behavior of sets (likewise dictionaries).
>
>
> But it is a behavior which has absolutely no meaning at all because the
> order does not depend on the elements of the set but on the history of how
> the set has been reached its current state.
> So why should I ever use this method on a set?
> What is the use case?
>

One example: you can use it to check an instance of Set<Float> to determine
if it has a NaN value. (The “obvious” way of doing it is not guaranteed to
work since NaN != NaN.)

I don’t see why a non-source-breaking change is suddenly off-limits.
>>
>> But more than that, any generic algorithm which is assuming that the
>> sequence is coming from an ordered source (i.e. many things using
>> first/last).  Some uses of first are ok because the programmer actually
>> means ‘any’, but anywhere where they actually mean first/last may be
>> problematic.
>>
>
> Such as...?
>
> Currently, there is no way to test for ordered-ness, so there is no way
>> for even a careful programmer to mitigate this problem.  By adding a
>> protocol which states that something is unordered, we can either branch on
>> it, or create a separate version of an algorithm for things which conform.
>>
>
> It is clearly the case that Swift’s protocol hierarchy fits sets and
> collections imperfectly; however, it is in the nature of modeling that
> imperfections are present. The question is not whether it is possible to
> incur performance, API surface area, and other trade-offs to make the model
> more faithful, but rather whether this usefully solves any problem. What is
> the problem being mitigated? As I write above, Swift’s Set and Dictionary
> types meet the semantic requirements for Collection and moonlight as
> ordered collections. What is a generic algorithm on an ordered collection
> that is  “not OK” for Set and Dictionary? (“elementsEqual”, as I’ve said,
> is not such an example.)
>
>
> On the contrary, `elementsEqual` is exactly such an example, because it
> makes no sense to use it on a Set.
>
> let s1 = Set([1,2,3,4,5,6])
> let s2 = Set([6,5,4,3,2,1])
>
> Both sets have different iteration orders. Comparing those sets with some
> other collection using `elementsEqual` will give no meaningful result
> because the order - and therefore the result of `elementsEqual` - is in
> effect random.
>

No, it is not such an example; it’s misleadingly named but works
correctly—that is, its behavior matches exactly the documented behavior,
which relies on only the semantic guarantees of Sequence, which Set
correctly fulfills.


>
> -Thorsten
>
>
>
>
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