<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="">Thanks all,<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I did note that Nothing had been considered for another purpose and rejected so I didn’t think it would cause confusion.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I understand folks who advocate another name such as Unit but don’t feel that would help newcomers. Unit doesn’t seem to be more intuitive for them than Void.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Chris’ note addressed my misconception that a goal of Swift was that it could be a good first or learning language. I apologize for drawing that conclusion from (perhaps misreading) articles about Playgrounds that mentioned Swift as being designed so that it was a ideal for children and new programmers. The articles may have meant that the environment was designed for that purpose not the language.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Although my examples were in stand-alone functions, I was really thinking about functions that are passed as argument to other functions.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Given the response, there doesn’t seem to be a reason for me to draw up a proposal.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Thank you for the quick feedback,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Best,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Daniel</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""><div class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Jul 21, 2016, at 1:19 PM, Matthew Johnson <<a href="mailto:matthew@anandabits.com" class="">matthew@anandabits.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: 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=""><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">On Jul 21, 2016, at 11:59 AM, Xiaodi Wu <<a href="mailto:xiaodi.wu@gmail.com" class="">xiaodi.wu@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class="">Quite frankly, I think the ship has long sailed for renaming Void.</div></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: 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=""><br class=""></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: 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="">Agree. I’m not advocating change, just stating things that should be considered if anyone wants to propose it.</div><br class="" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: 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;"><blockquote type="cite" class="" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: 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=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="gmail_extra"><br class=""></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br class=""><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 11:52 AM, Matthew Johnson via swift-evolution<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span dir="ltr" class=""><<a href="mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org" target="_blank" class="">swift-evolution@swift.org</a>></span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>wrote:<br class=""><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; border-left-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; padding-left: 1ex;"><br class=""><br class="">Sent from my iPad<br class=""><span class=""><br class="">> On Jul 21, 2016, at 11:42 AM, Daniel Steinberg via swift-evolution <<a href="mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org" class="">swift-evolution@swift.org</a>> wrote:<br class="">><br class="">> This may be a silly question - given that one of Swift’s design principles is to be a language for new programmers and for APIs to read like English phrases, should we replace the typealias of Void for the return type () with Nothing.<br class=""><br class=""></span>Nothing was one of the names considered for the bottom type that replaces @noreturn (<a href="https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0102-noreturn-bottom-type.md" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" class="">https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0102-noreturn-bottom-type.md</a>). I think it would be confusing to rename Void to Nothing.<br class=""><br class="">If we consider renaming it Unit is the obvious way to go (<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_type" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" class="">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_type</a>)<br class=""><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br class="">><br class="">> So<br class="">><br class="">> f: ( input: Int) -> Void<br class="">><br class="">> becomes<br class="">><br class="">> f: ( input: Int) -> Nothing<br class="">><br class="">> Instead of saying “f takes an Int and returns a Void” I read this as “f takes an Int and returns nothing”.<br class="">><br class="">> I’ve been using f:(input: Int) -> () because it’s easier to explain than Void to non-experienced programmers. Experienced programmers have no problem with Void. But Void seems to be something we’re using just because we have for a while - like x++ and C-style for loops.<br class="">><br class="">> Best,<br class="">><br class="">> Daniel<br class="">> _______________________________________________<br class="">> swift-evolution mailing list<br class="">><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org" class="">swift-evolution@swift.org</a><br class="">><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" class="">https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution</a><br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">swift-evolution mailing list<br class=""><a href="mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org" class="">swift-evolution@swift.org</a><br class=""><a href="https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" class="">https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution</a></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></div></body></html>