Removing "_ in" from empty closures

+1. In general, I think we should allow implicit arguments, without requiring the closure to use all the implicit $n variables like we do today. These should all be valid:

let _: () -> () = {}
let _: (Int) -> () = {}
let _: (Int, Int) -> Int = { 5 }
let _: (Int, Int) -> Int = { $0 }
let _: (Int, Int) -> Int = { $1 }

-Joe

···

On May 13, 2016, at 9:13 AM, Rob Napier via swift-evolution <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

Currently if a closure takes a value, it requires "_ in" to note that the value is ignored. This makes sense in many cases, but creates a bit of a mess in the case of an empty, void-returning closure:

doThing(withCompletion: { _ in })

I'd like to suggest that the compiler promote the empty closure literal {} to any void-returning closure type so that this could be written:

doThing(withCompletion: {})

This encourages the use of empty closures over optional closures, which I think is open for debate. In general I try to avoid optionals when they can be precisely replaced with a non-optional value. Furthermore, most Cocoa completion handlers are not optional.

The alternative is to not do this, but encourage that any closure that could reasonably be empty should in fact be optional. I would then want Cocoa functions with void-returning closures to be imported as optionals to avoid "{ _ in }".