[swift-evolution] 100% bikeshed topic: DictionaryLiteral

[Xiaodi Wu]

On Tue, Jan 9, 2018 at 00:40 Nevin Brackett-Rozinsky <
nevin.brackettrozinsky at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 11:53 PM, Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>
>> Thank you for the clarification. It occurred to me in the shower that
>> this might be the case, and that I was entirely mistaken as to what we were
>> talking about.
>>
>> Yes, then, I wholeheartedly agree on this point. Out of curiosity, why
>> are there source stability issues to 'typealias DictionaryLiteral<Key,
>> Value> = [(Key, Value)]'?
>
>
> Because at the point of use, “DictionaryLiteral” is instantiated with an
> actual dictionary literal, eg. “[a: 1, b: 2, c: 3]”, and that syntax isn’t
> available for an array of key-value pairs.
>

Why do we need available syntax? Sure, conformance of [(Key, Value)] to
ExpressibleByDictionaryLiteral can't be written in Swift, but we could make
this a built-in conformance. Literals are magical in many ways no matter
what.

As near as I can tell, the convenience of that spelling is the entire
> *raison-d’être* for “DictionaryLiteral” in the first place.
>
> The ulterior question of whether preserving “DictionaryLiteral” is
> worthwhile, is apparently out of scope. Personally, I have a hard time
> imagining a compelling use-case outside of the standard library, and I
> doubt it’s being used “in the wild” (I checked several projects in the
> source-compatibility suite and found zero occurrences).
>

I have seen examples where its use is encouraged, and I see no reason to
address this "ulterior question."

>
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