SE-0243: Codepoint and Character Literals

[xwu (Xiaodi Wu)]

@dwaite

Could you clarify this statement?

Are you saying that having an integer literal notation expressed via a code point (as a new option alongside decimal, hexadecimal, octal and binary notations) would be a deviation from the current literal system, presumably with negative impacts? For example

 let x:UInt8 = 🚲"^" // integer literal of 94

If not, would a new notation for expressing an array literal (of integer literals) based on the code points of a string be a deviation with negative impacts? Something like:

 let y:[UInt8] = ⛺️"foo" // unfortunately no good shed emoji

I'm not sure what you mean. These are not integer literals; they are string literals.

@taylorswift

Actually, I do recall that Chris Lattner has specifically said he or the core team made that choice early on. Whether the core team still holds that view today is unclear.

citation needed! i searched his twitter for a while and couldn’t find anything, and i am an ex-fangirl .

Swift does not support f, ul, or other suffixes for numeric literals as found in C; this was a deliberate choice, but I would have to dig for longer to find Chris's post specifically on that topic. Nor did we accept r as a prefix for raw strings; no doubt that discussion is still fresh in your mind.

I will do you one better, however: here is Chris's opinion of this exact idea.

@taylorswift

Perfect is the enemy of good

We are under no deadline to produce the good.