[swift-evolution] Proposal: Allow operators to have parameters with default values

[Dave DeLong]

While I agree that I can’t think of another use-case off the top of my head (curried operators, somehow? Maybe?), I also don’t necessarily see the benefit of restricting it.

As the implementation currently stands, we could add new keywords, like #module or #context (which would capture #file, #line, #function, #module, etc as a single type), without having to change the implementation of IsBinaryOperator() and IsUnaryOperator().

It’s also nice that if a legit use-case ever did come up, the language would support it out-of-the-box without requiring another change.

Dave

> On Nov 2, 2017, at 6:34 PM, Tony Allevato <tony.allevato at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I like this idea as it's presented here, for the debugging/logging reasons that you stated.
> 
> Should we tighten the shackles a little be to validate that *only* the special #file/#line/#function directives can be permitted for these extra parameters? I'm struggling to think of a case where we would want to allow something else, since there's no way to provide the values for them in a standard call.
> 
> 
> On Thu, Nov 2, 2017 at 5:26 PM Dave DeLong via swift-evolution <swift-evolution at swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution at swift.org>> wrote:
> Hi SE,
> 
> As I’ve been using my own custom operators like “?!”, “!!”, or operators provided by libraries (<|, ~>, etc), I’ve often wanted to capture the #file and #line where the operators are used to make debugging their use a lot easier.
> 
> For example, given something the unwrap-or-die operator (https://github.com/erica/swift-evolution/blob/2c1be72e34c970894e4ba7ed9df5cee3298d4282/proposals/XXXX-unwrap-or-die.md <https://github.com/erica/swift-evolution/blob/2c1be72e34c970894e4ba7ed9df5cee3298d4282/proposals/XXXX-unwrap-or-die.md>), you’d want to capture the #file and #line so you could pass it on to the underlying call to fatalError().
> 
> Or, if you’re using a custom bind operator and something goes wrong, it’d be great to be able to capture the file and line where the operator is used so you can quickly triage the bug in your code.
> 
> Unfortunately, Swift has the hard limit the the implementations of unary operators may have one-and-only-one parameter, and that binary operators may only have two parameters.
> 
> I’d like to propose a very minor change to Swift, whereby operator implementations may have more than their one or two parameters, provided that all subsequent parameters come with a default value. This would make it trivial to add in #file, #line, #function, etc to your operator implementations, which you can then capture for your own purposes.
> 
> An implementation of this change, with passing tests, can be found here: https://github.com/davedelong/swift/commit/c65c634a59b63add0dc9df1ac8803e9d70bfa697 <https://github.com/davedelong/swift/commit/c65c634a59b63add0dc9df1ac8803e9d70bfa697>
> 
> Dave
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