[swift-users] How do generics interact with overloaded methods?

[Ryan Conway]

Thank you for your responses. I'm grateful for having been given several
different perspectives, especially in such a short time, and have some
ideas for things to try this weekend.

If I'm understanding correctly, the salient point is that Swift will
resolve a call to an overloaded function to exactly one implementation of
that overloaded function, even if for all types of a generic class' generic
function.

I'd like to understand Swift's design philosophy better. Why were things
implemented this way? For example, in the following line of code:

let thisDoesntWork = Baz<UInt>().read()


The compiler knows that read() is being called on Baz<UInt>, so it could
know that read() must return a UInt, so it could know that it can safely
use the Bar.read() that returns a UInt. From what I'm hearing, this is what
C++ would use, but not Swift, and I imagine there is a good reason for it.

Wallacy, if you're able to provide a link to this WWDC talk I would greatly
appreciate it.

Ryan

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 6:07 AM, Wallacy <wallacyf at gmail.com> wrote:

> Generics are compile time feature, but like said, not like c++ templates.
> Unconstrained generic T will be like Any. " return self.myBar.read()" can
> only be translated to a "function pointer" to the generic version, because
> is the only information available at compile time.
> Has a talk on wwdc explaining this.
> Swift can do generic specialization, but only when information enough to
> do this. Usually constrained generic is the way to go.
>
>
> Em qui, 14 de jan de 2016 às 05:05, Ryan Conway via swift-users <
> swift-users at swift.org> escreveu:
>
>> Hey swift-users,
>>
>> I'm teaching myself Swift, coming from a mostly C and Python background,
>> and would like to understand generics more deeply. Right now, I'm seeing
>> generic data types invoke overloaded methods in ways I do not understand,
>> and am seeking clarification why.
>>
>> In an effort to model a data structure whose data can be represented as
>> multiple data types simultaneously, I've made this class. Here its
>> implementation is mocked using constants.
>>
>> class Bar {
>>     func read() -> Int {
>>         return -1
>>     }
>>     func read() -> UInt {
>>         return 1
>>     }
>>     func read<T>() -> T {
>>         print("Unsupported data type requested")
>>         exit(1)
>>     }
>> }
>>
>>
>> Objects of that class return the requested type as expected when used
>> like so:
>>
>> let thisWorks: Int = Bar().read() // returns -1
>> let thisAlsoWorks: UInt = Bar().read() // returns 1
>>
>>
>> However, when I introduce generics on top of that class, the expected
>> method (the "most precise" method) is not called. For example, given this
>> other class:
>>
>> class Baz<T> {
>>     let myBar = Bar()
>>
>>     func read() -> T {
>>         return self.myBar.read()
>>     }
>> }
>>
>>
>> Both of these invocations call the generic read<T>() -> T method rather
>> than the read() -> UInt method:
>>
>> let thisDoesntWork = Baz<UInt>().read()
>> let thisDoesntWorkEither: UInt = Baz<UInt>().read()
>>
>>
>> Am I using generics wrong here? Is there some other language feature I
>> should be using to capture this data? Any pointers would be greatly
>> appreciated.
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Ryan
>> _______________________________________________
>> swift-users mailing list
>> swift-users at swift.org
>> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-users
>>
>
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