<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=""><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">Apple frameworks contain prefixes, carried over from Objective-C.</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">These exist to prevent class and method name collisions.</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">Mattt Thompson has a great article about this, containing the following brilliant excerpt:</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">"Namespacing is the preeminent bugbear of Objective-C. A cosmetic quirk with global implications, the language’s lack of identifier containers remains a source of prodigious quantities of caremad for armchair language critics." (<a href="http://nshipster.com/namespacing/" class="">http://nshipster.com/namespacing/</a>)</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">Since Swift can handle with these naming conflicts, wouldn't it make sense to drop all framework prefixes in a Swift environment?</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">A classic example is UIKit, where all classes are prefixed with "UI". </div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">Code example:</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class=""> import UIKit</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class=""> class FooViewController: UIViewController {</div><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></p><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class=""> }</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">Dropping the prefix would simply lead to the following:</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class=""> import UIKit</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class=""> class FooViewController: ViewController {</div><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></p><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class=""> }</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">Since conflicts need to be handled by specifying the module name, the following could be used if "ViewController" was also used by either some, other than UIKit, imported framework or by a user defined class:</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class=""> import UIKit</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class=""> class FooViewController: UIKit.ViewController {</div><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></p><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class=""> }</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">"UIKit.ViewController" is of course quite longer than the current "UIViewController".</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">An improvement could be to allow frameworks to specify an abbreviated form.</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">UIKit could define "UI" as its abbreviation, making the following code valid:</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class=""> import UI</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class=""> class FooViewController: UI.ViewController {</div><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></p><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class=""> }</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">This all seems to me like a natural continuation of <a href="https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/9cf2685293108ea3efcbebb7ee6a8618b83d4a90/proposals/0086-drop-foundation-ns.md" class="">SE-0086</a>.</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">I do realise this would be a major change, breaking pretty much every Swift iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS project.</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">But in the long term, I think it's worth it.</div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69); min-height: 14px;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue'; color: rgb(69, 69, 69);" class="">– Louis D'hauwe</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>