> On Sep 5, 2017, at 14:50, Andrew Trick via swift-evolution
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> We don't have a consensus, but I think the suggestion to distinguish
> between single value vs. multiple semantics was good. Otherwise,
> adding the default count could be very misleading. Normally, we try to
> minimize surface area, but adding two methods for the single-value case
> avoids ambiguity between the buffer and pointer semantics:
>
> UMP (pointer)
> --- func initialize(to:count:(=1))
> +++ func initialize(to:)
> +++ func initialize(repeating:count:) // no default count
> +++ func assign(to:)
> +++ func assign(repeating:count:) // no default count
>
> UMRP (raw pointer):
> --- func initializeMemory<T>(as:at:(=0)count:(1)to:)
> +++ func initializeMemory<T>(as:repeating:count:) // remove default count
I am mostly in favor of this two-method approach, but 'to' may not be the right
label. Today we have both initialize(to:…) and initialize(from:…), which are
not opposites. I think we can live with that, but we definitely can't use
assign(to:). "x.assign(to: y)" means some form of "y = x".
That said, we don't actually need a single-element 'assign' variant, because
you can also write it "x.pointee = y". But I agree that symmetry is nice, if we
can get it.
I also want to note that we don't get to remove any of the old signatures; we
need to preserve them for compatibility with Swift 4.0 and Swift 3.0. They can
be marked obsoleted in Swift 5 and even deprecated in Swift 4.1 if we feel
strongly enough, but we don't get to drop them.
Jordan
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