> On 18 Feb 2017, at 16:28, Matthew Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Feb 18, 2017, at 4:54 AM, Brent Royal-Gordon via swift-evolution 
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Feb 18, 2017, at 2:18 AM, Haravikk via swift-evolution 
>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> This is an idea I had while working with collections, and is particularly 
>>> inspired by those that use common index types.
>>> 
>>> Consider for example an array; for indices it simply uses an integer, 
>>> however, while this is a perfectly valid type to use it opens up the 
>>> possibility of integers from any number of different sources being passed 
>>> in by mistake and causing run-time errors. The same is true for wrapping 
>>> types that use AnyIndex, or really any type that uses Any* to hide 
>>> underlying types, as on the surface all AnyIndex instances give the 
>>> illusion of being compatible when they're not, and will only produce errors 
>>> at run-time when a conflict arises.
>>> 
>>> The idea to combat this is simple; a new attribute that can be applied to a 
>>> typealias, my working name is @unique, but there's probably a much better 
>>> name for it. When applied to a type-alias it indicates to the type-checker 
>>> that the type being aliased should be treated as a unique type outside of 
>>> the scope in which it is declared.
>> 
>> I've encountered the same problem in essentially the same place, so I'd like 
>> to see a solution too.
>> 
>> This sounds like a slight variation on what, in previous discussions, has 
>> been called `newtype`. IIRC, one of the reasons we've never done `newtype` 
>> is that it's not clear which features you want to bring over from the base 
>> type, or which types should be used for things like operators. (If you have 
>> `func + (lhs: Int, rhs: Int) -> Int`, you don't want `func + (lhs: Index, 
>> rhs: Index) -> Index`; you want `func + (lhs: Index, rhs: Int) -> Index`.)
>> 
>> I'd like to suggest a design that I don't think has been considered before. 
>> Currently, if the first type in an enum's inheritance clause is a concrete 
>> type, a set of magical behaviors occur:
>> 
>> * The enum is conformed to `RawRepresentable` with a `RawValue` of the 
>> concrete type.
>> * Each case is associated with a raw value, specified by a literal attached 
>> to the case.
>> * `init?(rawValue:)` and `var rawValue { get }` are automatically generated.
>> 
>> There is currently no equivalent for structs, but I suggest we add one.
>> 
>> If you say:
>> 
>>      struct Index: Int {}
>> 
>> This is automatically equivalent to saying:
>> 
>>      struct Index: RawRepresentable {
>>              var rawValue: Int
>>              init(rawValue: Int) { self.rawValue = rawValue }
>>      }
>> 
>> And a special rule is applied: You may not declare any other stored 
>> properties.
>> 
>> Additionally, for both `enum`s and `struct`s with raw types, I would suggest 
>> that, if you conform to a protocol which the raw type conforms to and then 
>> fail to fulfill its (non-defaulted) requirements, Swift should generate a 
>> member which forwards to the raw value's implementation. It might even be 
>> nice to do the same when an initializer, method, property, or subscript is 
>> declared without providing a body. This would make it easy to decide which 
>> functionality should be exposed and how it should be provided--and it would 
>> provide a partial way to fulfill the frequent request for syntactic sugar 
>> for `Equatable`, `Hashable`, and `Comparable` conformances. (I could imagine 
>> this being generalized later on.)
>> 
>> The main drawback I can see is that the `rawValue` could not be 
>> encapsulated, since the conformance to the public `RawRepresentable` 
>> protocol could not be made private. That might be acceptable in a 
>> convenience feature, or we might decide (perhaps for both `struct`s and 
>> `enum`s) that Swift should generate the members without actually conforming 
>> the type unless explicitly asked to.
> 
> A lot of this is very similar to the protocol-based forwarding proposal I 
> worked on last year.  That proposal would avoid the problems you describe 
> around not being able to properly encapsulate `RawRepresentable`.  It was 
> also able to handle many nuances around forwarding of self and associated 
> type requirements.  It even had an example of how something like `newtype` 
> could be defined in terms of the mechanisms it provides.
> 
> I was mid-way through a second draft when it became clear it was not in scope 
> for Swift 3.  At that point I deferred further work until the time is right.  
> I would like to revisit it eventually, but it is clearly out of scope for 
> Swift 4 as well.

Did you get as far as putting up anywhere to look at?

It may be relevant to Swift 4 stage 2, though I'll admit I'm confused as hell 
what is and is not in scope; but I believe the ABI compatibility stuff has been 
pushed back so it might be accepting more general proposals again, I was going 
to re-submit some of mine that were out-of-scope before.

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