<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Dec 16, 2015, at 10:47 AM, Chris Lattner via swift-evolution <<a href="mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org" class="">swift-evolution@swift.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8" class=""><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">On Dec 16, 2015, at 10:34 AM, Jordan Rose via swift-evolution <<a href="mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org" class="">swift-evolution@swift.org</a>> wrote:<br class=""><div class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div class="">IOW, 'x' where x must be a Character, that is, an extended Unicode<br class="">grapheme cluster — represented in the source code as UTF8 or with the \u<br class="">notation. A shortcut for typing Character("x").<br class=""></div></div></blockquote></div><br class="" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><div class="" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">We actually had this at one point, but it turned out that sometimes you wanted a Character and sometimes a UnicodeScalar, and in both cases your algorithm was probably wrong (cf. String is no longer a CollectionType). At that point it didn't offer any benefits over just regular string syntax, and it freed up the syntax for<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i class="">something</i> else.</div><div class="" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><br class=""></div><div class="" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">There's a fair amount of precedent for single-quoted strings being:</div><div class="" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">- single characters (C, Java, C#)</div><div class="" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">- unprocessed strings (shell scripts, Ruby)</div><div class="" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">- exactly the same as double-quoted strings (Python)</div><div class="" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><br class=""></div><div class="" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">I (personally) wouldn't want them for multi-line literals, though.</div></div></blockquote><br class=""></div><div class="">I agree that this would be weird syntax for multi-line literals:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">let x = ‘</div><div class="">stuff</div><div class="">more stuff’</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">On the other hand, It could be a reasonable design to say that ‘xyz’ strings are a dual to “xyz” strings that disable escape expansion. If you did that, then you could end up with a world where multi-line strings could be either:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">let x = “””</div><div class="">stuff with\tescapes \(42)</div><div class="">“””</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">and:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">let x = ‘''</div><div class="">escapes\(42)not processed!\n</div><div class="">‘''</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Please ignore the “smart” quotes above :-)</div></div></div></blockquote><br class=""></div><div>I said this during the Swift 1 runup, and I'll say it again: Python has a design for this stuff that works. They didn't make any changes to it between Python 2 and 3, so it has proven itself with many generations of programmer. I still don't see any reason to invent something new. </div><br class=""><div class="">
-Dave<div class=""><br class=""></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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