<div dir="ltr">Let's start with: I much prefer including the word 'file' in the file access level, to not including it. The bikeshedding discussions proposed too many permutations of 'public' 'external' 'internal' 'private' for me, not to mention the potential additions of 'secret', 'hidden', 'closed'... I think single-word adjectives would be nice if there was a ready hierarchy available in English, but there isn't, and inventing one for this purpose makes learning and readability difficult.<div><br></div><div>So, burrowing back into the bike shed...</div><div><br></div><div>I think the three features you've listed - readability, fewer keywords, extensibility - work within the dimension of access levels we have now, as long as private(module) is implicitly the default. I'm curious about the setter-specific access where that isn't the case, though - suppose the getter-specific access level for your example wasn't 'internal'. How would we declare this?</div><div><br></div><div>public(open: get), private(file: set) var someValue: Int = 0</div><div>private(file: get, scope: set) var someValue: Int = 0</div><div><br></div><div>Orthogonal extensions, such as 'protected', multiply the problem. How do you restrict which access levels get 'type' access?</div><div><br></div><div>I think perhaps you reverse the arguments:</div><div>private(set: scope, get: file, type: module)</div><div><br></div><div>Perhaps, by default:</div><div><br></div><div>These four are equivalent:</div><div>var someValue: Int = 0</div><div>private var someValue: Int = 0</div><div>private(module) var someValue: Int = 0</div><div>private(get: module) var someValue: Int = 0</div><div><br></div><div>'set' defaults to 'get' level unless explicitly restricted further, e.g. these two are equivalent</div><div>private(set: file) var someValue: Int = 0</div><div>private(get: module, set: file) var someValue: Int = 0</div><div><br></div><div>Perhaps 'type' access is 'set' level unless explicitly exposed:</div><div>private(get: file, set: scope, type: module)</div><div><br></div><div>... It doesn't make sense to me that 'type' would be more restricted than 'set', but offhand I haven't figured out if 'type' can be more exposed than 'get'. If there are restrictions like this the compiler can complain that the access levels specified are inconsistent.</div><div><br></div><div>This still seems a bit clunky to me if you have a public and a private on the same line, but perhaps someone can suggest something for that.</div><div><br></div><div>Ross</div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Feb 20, 2017 at 11:42 AM, Haravikk via swift-evolution <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org" target="_blank">swift-evolution@swift.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">So discussion of the exact naming convention for access modifiers has been discussed multiple times, especially when fileprivate was being introduced. It's now been a while since fileprivate was added, so we've all had more time to actually work with it, so I wanted to raise the discussion again to see what people now think.<div><br></div><div>Specifically, during the debate over access modifiers I really didn't like the propose fileprivate, as I don't like conjoined lower-case key-"words" (to me a keyword should always be a single word, I still don't like associatetype or typealias either, and neither does macOS' auto-correct 😉). And to be honest my opinion hasn't changed; if anything I hate it even more.</div><div><br></div><div>The proposal I preferred was to use only the public and private keywords and use parameters to provide greater specificity, like so:</div><div><br></div><div><span class="m_6992110101845618359Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>public<span class="m_6992110101845618359Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>as it is now</div><div><span class="m_6992110101845618359Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>private(module)<span class="m_6992110101845618359Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>equivalent to internal, which is private to the current module/project</div><div><span class="m_6992110101845618359Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>private(file)<span class="m_6992110101845618359Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>equivalent to fileprivate</div><div><span class="m_6992110101845618359Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>private(scope)<span class="m_6992110101845618359Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>equivalent to current private</div><div><br></div><div>The actual parameters are up for debate, but I still feel this a lot clearer. I also generally prefer the parameterised version for several reasons:</div><div><br></div><div><ul class="m_6992110101845618359MailOutline"><li>Readability: I know not everyone will agree on this one, but I much prefer the separation to having conjoined keywords.</li><li>Fewer Keywords: Maybe I'm a keyword purist or something, but I just don't like having too many keywords in the language, especially four for what amounts to a single feature (access).</li><li>Extensibility: It is easier and cleaner to add more parameters in future. For example, private(type) could be an equivalent to protected access in other languages. It can also be used to more easily group external extension modifiers under public such as public(final), public(open) etc.</li></ul><div><br></div><div>For setter-specific access it might look something like:</div><div><br></div><div><font face="Monaco"><span class="m_6992110101845618359Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre-wrap"> </span>private(file:set) var someValue:Int = 0</font></div><div><br></div></div><div>I know it might not seem that important to some people, but this is one area of Swift's syntax that still bothers me, perhaps unreasonably so, but I don't get to pick what annoys me! I'd also seek to replace associatedtype and typealias (and any other conjoined keyword I've forgotten) but I haven't thought of any alternatives that I like for those yet.</div><div><br></div><div>Anyway, just wanted to discuss how others felt having used fileprivate and such for a while, and whether it's worth revisiting, or if I just have to live with it.</div></div><br>______________________________<wbr>_________________<br>
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