First, this is my first post to a list like this and I could not find the
instructions to properly respond to a post in the digest. Does one have to
subscribe to the verbose (non digest post) in order to respond to a thread
correctly? Or is there a link to some instructions? Thanks.
I come from a scientific/engineering background where I create a lot of utility
applications which do not have to be as robust in certain ways as commercial
applications which are used by a mass number of people. To be clear, the
applications need to work and produce correct results and need to be robust in
this way. Python is used by a large portion of the scientific community to
create applications such as I mentioned and in large part due to what Michael
stated in his original email. I dislike having to scan/read code which has
long multiply nested method trains such as
str.characters.count where to me, it is easier to scan/read code such as
str.len or len(str)
I understand the need for unicode in general purpose / internationalized
applications. However, it is overkill for most of what I need to do. Also, I
agree with Michael that learning the unicode way of Swift is a barrier to
people new to coding.
I am wondering why one can’t make a method extension for String called .len or
.length (and for that case make a commonly used subscript extension as well)
which conform to a protocol which is constructed as only taking say ascii or
simplified string?s This could be put into a “semi-standard” library and
people who needed/wanted a simplified interface could access and use it?
Couldn’t the existing dull underlying string structure be used for this?
I also don’t like to have to perform type conversions between floating point
numbers but that is for another thread.
——
> On Aug 15, 2016, at 1:00 PM, Michael Savich <[email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
> Back in Swift 1.0, subscripting a String was easy, you could just use
> subscripting in a very Python like way. But now, things are a bit more
> complicated. I recognize why we need syntax like str.startIndex.advancedBy(x)
> but it has its downsides. Namely, it makes things hard on beginners. If one
> of Swift's goals is to make it a great first language, this syntax fights
> that. Imagine having to explain Unicode and character size to an 8 year old.
> This is doubly problematic because String manipulation is one of the first
> things new coders might want to do.
<snip>
> On Aug 15, 2016, at 8:24 PM,Xiaodi Wu <[email protected]
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> <snip>
> But, we also want Swift to support Unicode by default, and we want that
> support to do things The Right Way(TM) by default. In other words, a user
> should not have to reach for a special type in order to handle arbitrary
> strings correctly, and I should be able to reassign `a = "你好"` and have
> things work as expected. So, we also can't have the "easy" string type be the
> default...
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