SE-0231 — Optional iteration

[Tino]

@endofunk

Attempting to cover every sharp edge in bubble wrap is a self defeating goal, plus it only introduces more inconsistency.

Imho there is a solution that would make things simpler instead of introducing any inconsistency - and I'm quite surprised about how many people complain about added complexity in this thread:
My memory may fail me, but I don't remember many who voiced this concern when huge new concepts like dynamic member lookup and all those automatic conformances (Codable...) have been introduced.

I really think Swift has too many small and specialized solutions and that it would be better to invest time and energy in powerful and composable features - but I see the inconsistency in that you can write

for x in seq! {}

but not

for x in seq? {}

@John_McCall

I understand your point, but again, people have exactly that reaction already: they learn about optional chaining, and then they run into one of its limitations, and then they get annoyed at the arbitrariness of the limitations.

Afair there has been at least one thread about "optional chaining for parameters" (yes, I seem to be right ;-): [Idea] Use optionals for non-optional parameters, Optional Argument Chaining) and people really want such shortcuts - it's just not possible to add them with a semantic as clear as in the case we are talking about here.