Hello Swifters,
I've been writing a lot more Swift code recently, and I have found that the
default placement of the 'throws' declaration is often confusing, especially to
those of us switching from languages where the type of errors thrown is
explicitly defined (like Java)
For example,
// This is pretty clear, this can throw an error
func foo() throws
{ ... }
// Also pretty clear, this returns a String
func bar() -> String
{ ... }
// Confusing. Does this throw a String? Does it return a String? Does it do
both?
// I personally keep reading this as 'this can throw a String'
func baz() throws -> String
// Equivalent code in Java (not a model, just for clarification of why the
above is confusing)
String baz() throws StringFormatException
I therefore suggest either tweaking the syntax around, or moving, the `throws`
keyword to avoid this confusion.
Some ideas I've had:
// Add a comma to separate them
func baz() throws, -> String
// Move `throws` to the end
func baz() -> String throws
// Change it to a prefix modifier (like `mutating`)
throwing func baz() -> String
I'm still not sold on any of the above syntaxes, but I would love to hear your
feedback.
This would affect existing code, but it would be a fairly small change that
would result in very large readability improvements, especially for newcomers,
and especially for those coming for a language such as Java.
-thislooksfun (tlf)
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