[Pitch #6] Actors

[michelf (Michel Fortin)]

From the Pitch #4 thread:

@Chris_Lattner3

It is perhaps the wrong time to discuss this, but I think that the word isolated for "actor self" is confusing regardless of what happens with nonisolated . The thing we want to convey here is that a function has "direct" access (as opposed to async/mailbox access) to the actor its argument is bound to -- we're not saying that the actor /type/ is nonisolated .

I'm really not sure what the right spelling of this is though, you could imagine several yucky options like:

• func f(a: direct YourActor)
• func f(a: nonmailbox YourActor)
• func f(a: within YourActor)

etc. nonisolated conveys that you've got an actor that doesn't obey the isolation rules, which is not what is going on. Does anyone else have a good suggestion here?

I agree isolated is confusing here. While direct isn't bad, I'd suggest sync:

• func f(a: sync YourActor)

It's easy to explain: it removes the implied async of isolated members.