I would like to note that overloading on inout is a code smell and something 
that should be removed in a future version of the language.  inout is not a 
type, it’s a SIL type residency annotation.

~Robert Widmann

> On Jun 13, 2017, at 10:40 AM, Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution 
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Note that “inout Void” is a distinct type from “Void”; it is not possible to 
> specify a default value for an inout Void parameter even explicitly (“error: 
> cannot pass immutable value of type ()...”), so naturally it cannot be done 
> implicitly either.
> On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 12:29 Jens Persson <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> The std lib swap could perhaps be an interesting example to consider:
> public func swap<T>(_ a: inout T, _ b: inout T)
> 
> What would happen with that?
> Will inout arguments be an exception to the rule of Void getting a default 
> value, and if so, what would the effects of that be?
> Or would it somehow be allowed to call swap()?
> Or is there a third alternative?
> /Jens
> 
> On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 7:15 PM, John McCall via swift-evolution 
> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> 
>> On Jun 13, 2017, at 4:41 AM, Xiaodi Wu <[email protected] 
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> 
>> On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 3:06 AM, John McCall <[email protected] 
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>> On Jun 13, 2017, at 3:30 AM, Jérémie Girault <[email protected] 
>>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Exactly, 
>>> The reflexion behind it is: 
>>> 
>>> - Let's understand that 0110 and other tuple SE are important for the 
>>> compiler, we do not want them to rollback
>>> - However we have number of regressions for generics / functional 
>>> programmers
>>> - Let’s solve this step by step like a typical problem
>>> 
>>> - Step 0 is adressing this Void tuple of size zero :
>>>     - Zero is in many problems of CS an edge case, so let’s handle this 
>>> case first
>>>     - The compiler knows what Void is, and its only value (or non-value)
>>>     - It was handled historically by the compiler because of implicit side 
>>> effects
>>>     - Let’s handle it explicitely with rules in current context
>>>     - one effect of the proposal is source compatibility
>>>     - but the goal is to build atop and strengthen 0110, 0066 and other 
>>> tuple-related SE
>>> 
>> 
>> There are four difficulties I see with this proposal.
>> 
>> The first is that it is a first step that quite clearly does not lead to 
>> anything.  It resolves a difficulty with exactly one case of function 
>> composition, but we would need completely different solutions to handle any 
>> of the other compositional regressions of SE-0110.
>> 
>> The second is that it's a huge source of complexity for the type system.  
>> The type checker would not be able to do even rudimentary type matching, 
>> e.g. when checking a call, without having first resolved all of the argument 
>> and parameter types to prove that they are not Void.  This would probably 
>> render it impossible to type-check many programs without some ad-hoc rule of 
>> inferring that certain types are not Void.  It would certainly make 
>> type-checking vastly more expensive.
>> 
>> The third is that it is not possible to prevent values of Void from 
>> existing, because (unlike Never, which cannot be constructed) they are 
>> always created by returning from a Void-returning function, and a generic 
>> function can do anything it likes with that value — turn it into an Any, 
>> store it in an Array, whatever.  The proposal seems to only consider using 
>> the value as a parameter.
>> 
>> Hang on, though. If Jérémie is interested only in addressing the issue of 
>> Void as a parameter and his idea can be adequately carried out by inferring 
>> a default value of Void for every parameter of type Void, this should be a 
>> fairly self-contained change, should it not? And would the impact on the 
>> cost of type checking really be vastly greater in that case?
> 
> If the proposal was phrased in terms of defaults, e.g. "trailing parameters 
> do not require a matching argument if they have Void type", then yes, that 
> would be implementable because it still admits a "local" reduction on call 
> constraints, one which does not need to immediately reason about the actual 
> types of arguments.  It is not clear that this rule allows function 
> compositions of the sort that Jérémie is looking for, though.
> 
> Anyway, that is not the proposal; the proposal is that parameters — in any 
> position — are simply removed from the parameter sequence if they have Void 
> type.  In order to allow composition (i.e. f(g(x)), where g: X -> Void), you 
> then need a matching rule that arguments are dropped from the argument 
> sequence (for purposes of type-checking) if they have Void type.  Either of 
> these rules is sufficient to turn the reduction of function-type matches into 
> an extremely messy combinatoric matching problem where e.g. (τ0, Int) can be 
> passed to a function taking (Int, τ1) if we can decide that τ0 == τ1 == Void.
> 
>> This idea is now rather intriguing to me because it extends beyond just 
>> addressing one symptom of SE-0110. Swift allows us to omit the spelling out 
>> of return types that are Void, it allows warning-free discarding of return 
>> values that are Void, etc. This could add a nice consistency and rationalize 
>> some of the weirdness of passing a value that is stipulated by the parameter 
>> type.
>> 
>> Finally, it would allow a lot of inadvertent errors with the use of generic 
>> functions, because any argument of unconstrained type could be accidentally 
>> specialized with Void.  For example, if you forgot to pass an argument to 
>> this function, it would simply infer T=Void:
>>   func append<T>(value: T)
>> It seems more likely that this would lead to unexpected, frustrating bugs 
>> than that this would actually be desired by the programmer.  You really just 
>> want this to kick in in more generic situations.
>> 
>> Hmm, at first glance, that seemed like it could be bad. But if, say, a 
>> particular collection can store an element of type Void, is it so 
>> undesirable to allow `append()` to append Void?
> 
> append on a Collection is not an unconstrained generic; its parameter type is 
> determined by the type of the collection.  Perhaps this was a poorly-chosen 
> example.
> 
> John.
> 
>> 
>> 
>> John.
>> 
>>> 
>>> —
>>> very short reply expected - vsre.info <http://vsre.info/>
>>> Jérémie Girault
>>> 
>>> On 13 juin 2017 at 00:44:52, Xiaodi Wu ([email protected] 
>>> <mailto:[email protected]>) wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 5:38 PM, Xiaodi Wu <[email protected] 
>>>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 5:25 PM, Jérémie Girault 
>>>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> —
>>>> very short reply expected - vsre.info <http://vsre.info/>
>>>> Jérémie Girault
>>>> 
>>>> On 12 juin 2017 at 23:56:37, Xiaodi Wu ([email protected] 
>>>> <mailto:[email protected]>) wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 4:47 PM, Jérémie Girault 
>>>>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>>> - Void as arguments is pretty common when using generics, that’s a core 
>>>>> point of this proposal. An maybe that’s why we misunderstood ourselves 
>>>>> (around 0110 / 0066). This proposal addresses arguments.
>>>>> - maybe it should be revised around this ? Simple example : 
>>>>> 
>>>>> `typealias Callback<T> = (T) -> Void` -> `Callback<Void>` will give 
>>>>> `(Void) => Void`. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> It was acceptable before swift4 but no more. However nobody cares about 
>>>>> this `Void` argument and actually we know it’s value. So why let the 
>>>>> developer type it ?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Ah, I see. The purpose of SE-0029...SE-0110 was to make it possible to 
>>>>> distinguish an argument list `(Void)` from an argument list `()`. This 
>>>>> does cause some verbosity where previously users relied on implicit tuple 
>>>>> splatting. Ideally, we would bring back some syntactic sugar to make this 
>>>>> more ergonomic. But, whether or not the spelling is made more 
>>>>> user-friendly, the point here is that _everybody_ should care about this 
>>>>> `Void` argument.
>>>> 
>>>> It is still be typechecked and appropriate errors should be reported to 
>>>> the user so _nobody_ will ignore it.
>>>> 
>>>> But with the proposal the code will be striped out of Void arguments at 
>>>> compile-time. I think it's a win for the developer on a lot of grounds. 
>>>> The fact that this proposal integrates with the type-system is also 
>>>> important.
>>>> 
>>>> If you are not comfortable about Void being stripped, we can also discuss 
>>>> alternatives: someone was suggesting me that it would be possible to 
>>>> replace :
>>>> 
>>>> ```
>>>> 
>>>> func foo<T, U, V>(t: T, u: U) -> V {
>>>> 
>>>>   // do something with t and u
>>>> 
>>>>   // return some V
>>>> 
>>>> }
>>>> 
>>>> ```
>>>> 
>>>> with
>>>> 
>>>> ```
>>>> 
>>>> func foo<Void, Int, String>(u: Int) -> String { let t = ()
>>>> 
>>>>   // do something with t and u
>>>> 
>>>>   // return some V
>>>> 
>>>> }
>>>> 
>>>> ```
>>>> 
>>>> or
>>>> 
>>>> ```
>>>> 
>>>> func foo<Void, Int, String>(t: Void = (), u: Int) -> String {
>>>> 
>>>>   // do something with t and u
>>>> 
>>>>   // return some V
>>>> 
>>>> }
>>>> 
>>>> ```
>>>> 
>>>> I don’t know what you would consider more effective or elegant (at an 
>>>> implementation level) but it’s the same result for the developper.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Ah, but I think I catch your drift with the last example. Is this a more 
>>>> general point that the compiler should treat every parameter of type Void 
>>>> as having an implied default value of Void? That would be an interesting 
>>>> idea.
>>>> 
>>>> What is the goal of such changes? Is it to allow you to write `foo()` 
>>>> instead of `foo(())` for a function `foo` of type `(T) -> Void`?
>>>> 
>>>> If so, then I think what you're seeking to do is reverse SE-0066 (as 
>>>> Vladimir points out), which explicits details how it's is an intentional 
>>>> change to require such a spelling. I think you're starting from the 
>>>> premise that this is unintended or undesirable, when in fact it is 
>>>> deliberate and approved.
>>>> 
>>>> It is also, unless I'm mistaken, not the issue that was raised initially 
>>>> with respect to SE-0110, which had to do with the extra boilerplate of 
>>>> destructuring a tuple inside a closure, something that was not so obvious 
>>>> before implementation.
>>>> 
>>>>> My point here is that `Void` should be “striped” by “reducing” argument 
>>>>> list signatures.
>>>>> 
>>>>> —
>>>>> very short reply expected - vsre.info <http://vsre.info/>
>>>>> Jérémie Girault
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 12 juin 2017 at 19:15:18, John McCall ([email protected] 
>>>>> <mailto:[email protected]>) wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Jun 12, 2017, at 4:48 AM, Jérémie Girault via swift-evolution 
>>>>>>> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Hi here,
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> As I tested swift4 in xcode9b1 I noticed a lot of regressions about 
>>>>>>> tuples usage.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> After documenting myself about the changes which happened, I thought 
>>>>>>> that they could be improved. Instead of fighting these propositions 
>>>>>>> (which make sense), I wanted create a few proposal which would improve 
>>>>>>> these recent changes with a few simple rules.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> My propositions are based on the recent decisions and in the 
>>>>>>> continuation of SE-0110. The first one is about Void.
>>>>>>> Void is historically defined as the type of the empty tuple. The reason 
>>>>>>> of this is that arguments were initially considered as tuple.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The dominant consideration here was always return types, not parameters. 
>>>>>>  I'm not sure there was ever much point in writing Void in a parameter 
>>>>>> list, but whatever reasons there were surely vanished with SE-0066.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Note that 'void' in C was originally exclusively a return type.  ANSI 
>>>>>> gave it a new purpose it with void*, but the meaning is totally 
>>>>>> unrelated.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> John.
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
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