Sorry about dredging up an older topic! I was trying to search through the
mailing list to figure out the right place to reference and this seemed as
good as any... Also this is the first mailing list I've ever joined and
first e-mail on said list so please forgive me if I'm doing this wrong!
I wanted to ask a question on the future of doing Protocol-oriented
programming in conjunction with generics. Disclosure, I've worked a lot
with C# so this would be the same idea as Interface oriented programming in
combination with Generics there.
Is there currently a way to do dependency injection using protocols with
generics? I've linked to a StackOverflow question below that I've asked
regarding this topic (again if that is a faux pas I apologize).
The main aspect that I'm interested in getting to is being able to properly
mock and unit test my code using dependency injection and Protocols. This
is a very, very useful way to architect your code in such a way as to
easily facilitate this kind of unit testing in conjunction with Mocking.
Please let me know if I'm completely missing the boat here!
Thanks,
Patrick
Hi all,
Introduction
The “Complete Generics” goal for Swift 3 has been fairly ill-defined thus
fair, with just this short blurb in the list of goals:
Complete generics: Generics are used pervasively in a number of Swift
libraries, especially the standard library. However, there are a number of
generics features the standard library requires to fully realize its
vision, including recursive protocol constraints, the ability to make a
constrained extension conform to a new protocol (i.e., an array of
Equatable elements is Equatable), and so on. Swift 3.0 should provide those
generics features needed by the standard library, because they affect the
standard library's ABI.
This message expands upon the notion of “completing generics”. It is not
a plan for Swift 3, nor an official core team communication, but it
collects the results of numerous discussions among the core team and Swift
developers, both of the compiler and the standard library. I hope to
achieve several things:
Communicate a vision for Swift generics, building on the original
generics design document<
https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/Generics.rst>, so we have
something concrete and comprehensive to discuss.
Establish some terminology that the Swift developers have been using for
these features, so our discussions can be more productive (“oh, you’re
proposing what we refer to as ‘conditional conformances’; go look over at
this thread”).
Engage more of the community in discussions of specific generics
features, so we can coalesce around designs for public review. And maybe
even get some of them implemented.
A message like this can easily turn into a centithread<
Urban Dictionary: centithread. To separate
concerns in our discussion, I ask that replies to this specific thread be
limited to discussions of the vision as a whole: how the pieces fit
together, what pieces are missing, whether this is the right long-term
vision for Swift, and so on. For discussions of specific language features,
e.g., to work out the syntax and semantics of conditional conformances or
discuss the implementation in compiler or use in the standard library,
please start a new thread based on the feature names I’m using.
This message covers a lot of ground; I’ve attempted a rough
categorization of the various features, and kept the descriptions brief to
limit the overall length. Most of these aren’t my ideas, and any syntax I’m
providing is simply a way to express these ideas in code and is subject to
change. Not all of these features will happen, either soon or ever, but
they are intended to be a fairly complete whole that should mesh together.
I’ve put a * next to features that I think are important in the nearer term
vs. being interesting “some day”. Mostly, the *’s reflect features that
will have a significant impact on the Swift standard library’s design and
implementation.
Enough with the disclaimers; it’s time to talk features.
Removing unnecessary restrictions
There are a number of restrictions to the use of generics that fall out
of the implementation in the Swift compiler. Removal of these restrictions
is a matter of implementation only; one need not introduce new syntax or
semantics to realize them. I’m listing them for two reasons: first, it’s an
acknowledgment that these features are intended to exist in the model we
have today, and, second, we’d love help with the implementation of these
features.
*Recursive protocol constraints
Currently, an associated type cannot be required to conform to its
enclosing protocol (or any protocol that inherits that protocol). For
example, in the standard library SubSequence type of a Sequence should
itself be a Sequence:
protocol Sequence {
associatedtype Iterator : IteratorProtocol
…
associatedtype SubSequence : Sequence // currently ill-formed, but should
be possible
}
The compiler currently rejects this protocol, which is unfortunate: it
effectively pushes the SubSequence-must-be-a-Sequence requirement into
every consumer of SubSequence, and does not communicate the intent of this
abstraction well.
Nested generics
Currently, a generic type cannot be nested within another generic type,
e.g.
struct X<T>{
struct Y<U>{ } // currently ill-formed, but should be possible
}There isn’t much to say about this: the compiler simply needs to be
improved to handle nested generics throughout.
Concrete same-type requirements
Currently, a constrained extension cannot use a same-type constraint to
make a type parameter equivalent to a concrete type. For example:
extension Array where Element == String {
func makeSentence() ->String {
// uppercase first string, concatenate with spaces, add a period, whatever
}
}This is a highly-requested feature that fits into the existing syntax and
semantics. Note that one could imagine introducing new syntax, e.g.,
extending “Array<String>”, which gets into new-feature territory: see the
section on “Parameterized extensions”.
Parameterizing other declarations
There are a number of Swift declarations that currently cannot have
generic parameters; some of those have fairly natural extensions to generic
forms that maintain their current syntax and semantics, but become more
powerful when made generic.
Generic typealiases
Typealiases could be allowed to carry generic parameters. They would
still be aliases (i.e., they would not introduce new types). For example:
typealias StringDictionary<Value>= Dictionary<String, Value>
var d1 = StringDictionary<Int>()
var d2: Dictionary<String, Int>= d1 // okay: d1 and d2 have the same
type, Dictionary<String, Int>
Generic subscripts
Subscripts could be allowed to have generic parameters. For example, we
could introduce a generic subscript on a Collection that allows us to pull
out the values at an arbitrary set of indices:
extension Collection {
subscript<Indices: Sequence where Indices.Iterator.Element ==
(indices: Indices) ->[Iterator.Element] {
get {
var result = [Iterator.Element]()
for index in indices {
result.append(self[index])
}return result
}set {
for (index, value) in zip(indices, newValue) {
self[index] = value
}
}
}
}Generic constants
let constants could be allowed to have generic parameters, such that they
produce differently-typed values depending on how they are used. For
example, this is particularly useful for named literal values, e.g.,
let π<T : FloatLiteralConvertible>: T =
3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399
The Clang importer could make particularly good use of this when
importing macros.
Parameterized extensions
Extensions themselves could be parameterized, which would allow some
structural pattern matching on types. For example, this would permit one to
extend an array of optional values, e.g.,
extension<T>Array where Element == T? {
var someValues: [T] {
var result = [T]()
for opt in self {
if let value = opt { result.append(value) }
}
return result
}
}We can generalize this to a protocol extensions:
extension<T>Sequence where Element == T? {
var someValues: [T] {
var result = [T]()
for opt in self {
if let value = opt { result.append(value) }
}
return result
}
}Note that when one is extending nominal types, we could simplify the
syntax somewhat to make the same-type constraint implicit in the syntax:
extension<T>Array<T?>{
var someValues: [T] {
var result = [T]()
for opt in self {
if let value = opt { result.append(value) }
}
return result
}
}When we’re working with concrete types, we can use that syntax to improve
the extension of concrete versions of generic types (per “Concrete
same-type requirements”, above), e.g.,
extension Array<String>{
func makeSentence() ->String {
// uppercase first string, concatenate with spaces, add a period, whatever
}
}Minor extensions
There are a number of minor extensions we can make to the generics system
that don’t fundamentally change what one can express in Swift, but which
can improve its expressivity.
*Arbitrary requirements in protocols
Currently, a new protocol can inherit from other protocols, introduce new
associated types, and add new conformance constraints to associated types
(by redeclaring an associated type from an inherited protocol). However,
one cannot express more general constraints. Building on the example from
“Recursive protocol constraints”, we really want the element type of a
Sequence’s SubSequence to be the same as the element type of the Sequence,
e.g.,
protocol Sequence {
associatedtype Iterator : IteratorProtocol
…
associatedtype SubSequence : Sequence where SubSequence.Iterator.Element
== Iterator.Element
}
Hanging the where clause off the associated type is protocol not ideal,
but that’s a discussion for another thread.
*Typealiases in protocols and protocol extensions
Now that associated types have their own keyword (thanks!), it’s
reasonable to bring back “typealias”. Again with the Sequence protocol:
protocol Sequence {
associatedtype Iterator : IteratorProtocol
typealias Element = Iterator.Element // rejoice! now we can refer to
SomeSequence.Element rather than SomeSequence.Iterator.Element
}
Default generic arguments
Generic parameters could be given the ability to provide default
arguments, which would be used in cases where the type argument is not
specified and type inference could not determine the type argument. For
example:
public final class Promise<Value, Reason=Error>{ … }
func getRandomPromise() ->Promise<Int, ErrorProtocol>{ … }
var p1: Promise<Int>= …
var p2: Promise<Int, Error>= p1 // okay: p1 and p2 have the same type
Promise<Int, Error>
var p3: Promise = getRandomPromise() // p3 has type Promise<Int,
due to type inferenceGeneralized “class” constraints
The “class” constraint can currently only be used for defining protocols.
We could generalize it to associated type and type parameter declarations,
e.g.,
protocol P {
associatedtype A : class
}func foo<T : class>(t: T) { }
As part of this, the magical AnyObject protocol could be replaced with an
existential with a class bound, so that it becomes a typealias:
typealias AnyObject = protocol<class>
See the “Existentials” section, particularly “Generalized existentials”,
for more information.
*Allowing subclasses to override requirements satisfied by defaults
When a superclass conforms to a protocol and has one of the protocol’s
requirements satisfied by a member of a protocol extension, that member
currently cannot be overridden by a subclass. For example:
protocol P {
func foo()
}extension P {
func foo() { print(“P”) }
}class C : P {
// gets the protocol extension’s
}class D : C {
/*override not allowed!*/ func foo() { print(“D”) }
}let p: P = D()
p.foo() // gotcha: prints “P” rather than “D”!D.foo should be required to specify “override” and should be called
dynamically.
Major extensions to the generics model
Unlike the minor extensions, major extensions to the generics model
provide more expressivity in the Swift generics system and, generally, have
a much more significant design and implementation cost.
*Conditional conformances
Conditional conformances express the notion that a generic type will
conform to a particular protocol only under certain circumstances. For
example, Array is Equatable only when its elements are Equatable:
extension Array : Equatable where Element : Equatable { }
func ==<T : Equatable>(lhs: Array<T>, rhs: Array<T>) ->Bool { … }
Conditional conformances are a potentially very powerful feature. One
important aspect of this feature is how deal with or avoid overlapping
conformances. For example, imagine an adaptor over a Sequence that has
conditional conformances to Collection and MutableCollection:
struct SequenceAdaptor<S: Sequence>: Sequence { }
extension SequenceAdaptor : Collection where S: Collection { … }
extension SequenceAdaptor : MutableCollection where S: MutableCollection
{ }
This should almost certainly be permitted, but we need to cope with or
reject “overlapping” conformances:
extension SequenceAdaptor : Collection where S:
SomeOtherProtocolSimilarToCollection { } // trouble: two ways for
SequenceAdaptor to conform to Collection
See the section on “Private conformances” for more about the issues with
having the same type conform to the same protocol multiple times.
Variadic generics
Currently, a generic parameter list contains a fixed number of generic
parameters. If one has a type that could generalize to any number of
generic parameters, the only real way to deal with it today involves
creating a set of types. For example, consider the standard library’s “zip”
function. It returns one of these when provided with two arguments to zip
together:
public struct Zip2Sequence<Sequence1 : Sequence,
Sequence2 : Sequence>: Sequence { … }public func zip<Sequence1 : Sequence, Sequence2 : Sequence>(
sequence1: Sequence1, _ sequence2: Sequence2)
->Zip2Sequence<Sequence1, Sequence2>{ … }Supporting three arguments would require copy-paste of those of those:
public struct Zip3Sequence<Sequence1 : Sequence,
Sequence2 : Sequence,
Sequence3 : Sequence>: Sequence { … }public func zip<Sequence1 : Sequence, Sequence2 : Sequence, Sequence3 :
(
sequence1: Sequence1, _ sequence2: Sequence2, _ sequence3: sequence3)
->Zip3Sequence<Sequence1, Sequence2, Sequence3>{ … }Variadic generics would allow us to abstract over a set of generic
parameters. The syntax below is hopelessly influenced by C++11 variadic
templates<http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2008_02/article2/>\(sorry\), where
putting an ellipsis (“…”) to the left of a declaration makes it a
“parameter pack” containing zero or more parameters and putting an ellipsis
to the right of a type/expression/etc. expands the parameter packs within
that type/expression into separate arguments. The important part is that we
be able to meaningfully abstract over zero or more generic parameters, e.g.:
public struct ZipIterator<... Iterators : IteratorProtocol>: Iterator {
// zero or more type parameters, each of which conforms to IteratorProtocol
public typealias Element = (Iterators.Element...) // a tuple containing
the element types of each iterator in Iterators
var (...iterators): (Iterators...) // zero or more stored properties, one
for each type in Iterators
var reachedEnd: Bool = false
public mutating func next() ->Element? {
if reachedEnd { return nil }guard let values = (iterators.next()...) { // call “next” on each of the
iterators, put the results into a tuple named “values"
reachedEnd = true
return nil
}return values
}
}public struct ZipSequence<...Sequences : Sequence>: Sequence {
public typealias Iterator = ZipIterator<Sequences.Iterator...>// get the
zip iterator with the iterator types of our Sequences
var (...sequences): (Sequences...) // zero or more stored properties, one
for each type in Sequences
// details ...
}Such a design could also work for function parameters, so we can pack
together multiple function arguments with different types, e.g.,
public func zip<... Sequences : SequenceType>(... sequences: Sequences...)
->ZipSequence<Sequences...>{
return ZipSequence(sequences...)
}Finally, this could tie into the discussions about a tuple “splat”
operator. For example:
func apply<... Args, Result>(fn: (Args...) ->Result, // function taking
some number of arguments and producing Result
args: (Args...)) ->Result { // tuple of arguments
return fn(args...) // expand the arguments in the tuple “args” into
separate arguments
}
Extensions of structural types
Currently, only nominal types (classes, structs, enums, protocols) can be
extended. One could imagine extending structural types—particularly tuple
types—to allow them to, e.g., conform to protocols. For example, pulling
together variadic generics, parameterized extensions, and conditional
conformances, one could express “a tuple type is Equatable if all of its
element types are Equatable”:
extension<...Elements : Equatable>(Elements...) : Equatable { //
extending the tuple type “(Elements…)” to be Equatable
}
There are some natural bounds here: one would need to have actual
structural types. One would not be able to extend every type:
extension<T>T { // error: neither a structural nor a nominal type
}And before you think you’re cleverly making it possible to have a
conditional conformance that makes every type T that conforms to protocol P
also conform to protocol Q, see the section "Conditional conformances via
protocol extensions”, below:
extension<T : P>T : Q { // error: neither a structural nor a nominal type
}Syntactic improvements
There are a number of potential improvements we could make to the
generics syntax. Such a list could go on for a very long time, so I’ll only
highlight some obvious ones that have been discussed by the Swift
developers.
*Default implementations in protocols
Currently, protocol members can never have implementations. We could
allow one to provide such implementations to be used as the default if a
conforming type does not supply an implementation, e.g.,
protocol Bag {
associatedtype Element : Equatable
func contains(element: Element) ->Boolfunc containsAll<S: Sequence where Sequence.Iterator.Element ==
(elements: S) ->Bool {
for x in elements {
if contains(x) { return true }
}
return false
}
}struct IntBag : Bag {
typealias Element = Int
func contains(element: Int) ->Bool { ... }// okay: containsAll requirement is satisfied by Bag’s default
implementation
}
One can get this effect with protocol extensions today, hence the
classification of this feature as a (mostly) syntactic improvement:
protocol Bag {
associatedtype Element : Equatable
func contains(element: Element) ->Boolfunc containsAll<S: Sequence where Sequence.Iterator.Element ==
(elements: S) ->Bool
}extension Bag {
func containsAll<S: Sequence where Sequence.Iterator.Element ==
(elements: S) ->Bool {
for x in elements {
if contains(x) { return true }
}
return false
}
}*Moving the where clause outside of the angle brackets
The “where” clause of generic functions comes very early in the
declaration, although it is generally of much less concern to the client
than the function parameters and result type that follow it. This is one of
the things that contributes to “angle bracket blindness”. For example,
consider the containsAll signature above:
func containsAll<S: Sequence where Sequence.Iterator.Element ==
(elements: S) ->BoolOne could move the “where” clause to the end of the signature, so that
the most important parts—name, generic parameter, parameters, result
type—precede it:
func containsAll<S: Sequence>(elements: S) ->Bool
where Sequence.Iterator.Element == Element*Renaming “protocol<…>” to “Any<…>”.
The “protocol<…>” syntax is a bit of an oddity in Swift. It is used to
compose protocols together, mostly to create values of existential type,
e.g.,
var x: protocol<NSCoding, NSCopying>
It’s weird that it’s a type name that starts with a lowercase letter, and
most Swift developers probably never deal with this feature unless they
happen to look at the definition of Any:
typealias Any = protocol<>
“Any” might be a better name for this functionality. “Any” without
brackets could be a keyword for “any type”, and “Any” followed by brackets
could take the role of “protocol<>” today:
var x: Any<NSCoding, NSCopying>
That reads much better: “Any type that conforms to NSCoding and
NSCopying”. See the section "Generalized existentials” for additional
features in this space.
Maybe
There are a number of features that get discussed from time-to-time,
while they could fit into Swift’s generics system, it’s not clear that they
belong in Swift at all. The important question for any feature in this
category is not “can it be done” or “are there cool things we can express”,
but “how can everyday Swift developers benefit from the addition of such a
feature?”. Without strong motivating examples, none of these “maybes” will
move further along.
Dynamic dispatch for members of protocol extensions
Only the requirements of protocols currently use dynamic dispatch, which
can lead to surprises:
protocol P {
func foo()
}extension P {
func foo() { print(“P.foo()”)
func bar() { print(“P.bar()”)
}struct X : P {
func foo() { print(“X.foo()”)
func bar() { print(“X.bar()”)
}let x = X()
x.foo() // X.foo()
x.bar() // X.bar()let p: P = X()
p.foo() // X.foo()
p.bar() // P.bar()Swift could adopt a model where members of protocol extensions are
dynamically dispatched.
Named generic parameters
When specifying generic arguments for a generic type, the arguments are
always positional: Dictionary<String, Int>is a Dictionary whose Key type is
String and whose Value type is Int, by convention. One could permit the
arguments to be labeled, e.g.,
var d: Dictionary<Key: String, Value: Int>
Such a feature makes more sense if Swift gains default generic arguments,
because generic argument labels would allow one to skip defaulted arguments.
Generic value parameters
Currently, Swift’s generic parameters are always types. One could imagine
allowing generic parameters that are values, e.g.,
struct MultiArray<T, let Dimensions: Int>{ // specify the number of
dimensions to the array
subscript (indices: Int...) ->T {
get {
require(indices.count == Dimensions)
// ...
}
}A suitably general feature might allow us to express fixed-length array
or vector types as a standard library component, and perhaps also allow one
to implement a useful dimensional analysis library. Tackling this feature
potentially means determining what it is for an expression to be a
“constant expression” and diving into dependent-typing, hence the “maybe”.
Higher-kinded types
Higher-kinded types allow one to express the relationship between two
different specializations of the same nominal type within a protocol. For
example, if we think of the Self type in a protocol as really being
“Self<T>”, it allows us to talk about the relationship between “Self<T>”
and “Self<U>” for some other type U. For example, it could allow the “map”
operation on a collection to return a collection of the same kind but with
a different operation, e.g.,
let intArray: Array<Int>= …
intArray.map { String($0) } // produces Array<String>
let intSet: Set<Int>= …
intSet.map { String($0) } // produces Set<String>Potential syntax borrowed from one thread on higher-kinded types<
https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20151214/002736.html>uses
···
~=
as a “similarity” constraint to describe a Functor protocol:
protocol Functor {
associatedtype A
func fmap<FB where FB ~= Self>(f: A ->FB.A) ->FB
}Specifying type arguments for uses of generic functions
The type arguments of a generic function are always determined via type
inference. For example, given:
func f<T>(t: T)
one cannot directly specify T: either one calls “f” (and T is determined
via the argument’s type) or one uses “f” in a context where it is given a
particular function type (e.g., “let x: (Int) ->Void = f” would infer T =
Int). We could permit explicit specialization here, e.g.,
let x = f<Int>// x has type (Int) ->Void
Unlikely
Features in this category have been requested at various times, but they
don’t fit well with Swift’s generics system because they cause some part of
the model to become overly complicated, have unacceptable implementation
limitations, or overlap significantly with existing features.
Generic protocols
One of the most commonly requested features is the ability to
parameterize protocols themselves. For example, a protocol that indicates
that the Self type can be constructed from some specified type T:
protocol ConstructibleFromValue<T>{
init(_ value: T)
}Implicit in this feature is the ability for a given type to conform to
the protocol in two different ways. A “Real” type might be constructible
from both Float and Double, e.g.,
struct Real { … }
extension Real : ConstructibleFrom<Float>{
init(_ value: Float) { … }
}
extension Real : ConstructibleFrom<Double>{
init(_ value: Double) { … }
}Most of the requests for this feature actually want a different feature.
They tend to use a parameterized Sequence as an example, e.g.,
protocol Sequence<Element>{ … }
func foo(strings: Sequence<String>) { /// works on any sequence
containing Strings
// ...
}The actual requested feature here is the ability to say “Any type that
conforms to Sequence whose Element type is String”, which is covered by the
section on “Generalized existentials”, below.
More importantly, modeling Sequence with generic parameters rather than
associated types is tantalizing but wrong: you don’t want a type conforming
to Sequence in multiple ways, or (among other things) your for..in loops
stop working, and you lose the ability to dynamically cast down to an
existential “Sequence” without binding the Element type (again, see
“Generalized existentials”). Use cases similar to the
ConstructibleFromValue protocol above seem too few to justify the potential
for confusion between associated types and generic parameters of protocols;
we’re better off not having the latter.
Private conformances
Right now, a protocol conformance can be no less visible than the minimum
of the conforming type’s access and the protocol’s access. Therefore, a
public type conforming to a public protocol must provide the conformance
publicly. One could imagine removing that restriction, so that one could
introduce a private conformance:
public protocol P { }
public struct X { }
extension X : internal P { … } // X conforms to P, but only within this
module
The main problem with private conformances is the interaction with
dynamic casting. If I have this code:
func foo(value: Any) {
if let x = value as? P { print(“P”) }
}foo(X())
Under what circumstances should it print “P”? If foo() is defined within
the same module as the conformance of X to P? If the call is defined within
the same module as the conformance of X to P? Never? Either of the first
two answers requires significant complications in the dynamic casting
infrastructure to take into account the module in which a particular
dynamic cast occurred (the first option) or where an existential was formed
(the second option), while the third answer breaks the link between the
static and dynamic type systems—none of which is an acceptable result.
Conditional conformances via protocol extensions
We often get requests to make a protocol conform to another protocol.
This is, effectively, the expansion of the notion of “Conditional
conformances” to protocol extensions. For example:
protocol P {
func foo()
}protocol Q {
func bar()
}extension Q : P { // every type that conforms to Q also conforms to P
func foo() { // implement “foo” requirement in terms of “bar"
bar()
}
}func f<T: P>(t: T) { … }
struct X : Q {
func bar() { … }
}f(X()) // okay: X conforms to P through the conformance of Q to P
This is an extremely powerful feature: is allows one to map the
abstractions of one domain into another domain (e.g., every Matrix is a
Graph). However, similar to private conformances, it puts a major burden on
the dynamic-casting runtime to chase down arbitrarily long and potentially
cyclic chains of conformances, which makes efficient implementation nearly
impossible.
Potential removals
The generics system doesn’t seem like a good candidate for a reduction in
scope; most of its features do get used fairly pervasively in the standard
library, and few feel overly anachronistic. However...
Associated type inference
Associated type inference is the process by which we infer the type
bindings for associated types from other requirements. For example:
protocol IteratorProtocol {
associatedtype Element
mutating func next() ->Element?
}struct IntIterator : IteratorProtocol {
mutating func next() ->Int? { … } // use this to infer Element = Int
}Associated type inference is a useful feature. It’s used throughout the
standard library, and it helps keep associated types less visible to types
that simply want to conform to a protocol. On the other hand, associated
type inference is the only place in Swift where we have a global type
inference problem: it has historically been a major source of bugs, and
implementing it fully and correctly requires a drastically different
architecture to the type checker. Is the value of this feature worth
keeping global type inference in the Swift language, when we have
deliberatively avoided global type inference elsewhere in the language?
Existentials
Existentials aren’t really generics per se, but the two systems are
closely intertwined due to their mutable dependence on protocols.
*Generalized existentials
The restrictions on existential types came from an implementation
limitation, but it is reasonable to allow a value of protocol type even
when the protocol has Self constraints or associated types. For example,
consider IteratorProtocol again and how it could be used as an existential:
protocol IteratorProtocol {
associatedtype Element
mutating func next() ->Element?
}let it: IteratorProtocol = …
it.next() // if this is permitted, it could return an “Any?”, i.e., the
existential that wraps the actual element
Additionally, it is reasonable to want to constrain the associated types
of an existential, e.g., “a Sequence whose element type is String” could be
expressed by putting a where clause into “protocol<…>” or “Any<…>” (per
“Renaming protocol<…>to Any<…>”):
let strings: Any<Sequence where .Iterator.Element == String>= [“a”, “b”,
“c”]
The leading “.” indicates that we’re talking about the dynamic type,
i.e., the “Self” type that’s conforming to the Sequence protocol. There’s
no reason why we cannot support arbitrary “where” clauses within the
“Any<…>”. This very-general syntax is a bit unwieldy, but common cases can
easily be wrapped up in a generic typealias (see the section “Generic
typealiases” above):
typealias AnySequence<Element>= Any<Sequence where .Iterator.Element ==
let strings: AnySequence<String>= [“a”, “b”, “c”]
Opening existentials
Generalized existentials as described above will still have trouble with
protocol requirements that involve Self or associated types in function
parameters. For example, let’s try to use Equatable as an existential:
protocol Equatable {
func ==(lhs: Self, rhs: Self) ->Bool
func !=(lhs: Self, rhs: Self) ->Bool
}let e1: Equatable = …
let e2: Equatable = …
if e1 == e2 { … } // error: e1 and e2 don’t necessarily have the same
dynamic type
One explicit way to allow such operations in a type-safe manner is to
introduce an “open existential” operation of some sort, which extracts and
gives a name to the dynamic type stored inside an existential. For example:
if let storedInE1 = e1 openas T { // T is a the type of storedInE1, a
copy of the value stored in e1
if let storedInE2 = e2 as? T { // is e2 also a T?
if storedInE1 == storedInE2 { … } // okay: storedInT1 and storedInE2 are
both of type T, which we know is Equatable
}
}Thoughts?
- Doug