Shorthand Optional Notation proposal

Hey there,

I have a proposal I’d like to ask you guys to look at before I try to submit it as a formal proposal on the GitHub repository. Before I write a complete draft with a detailed explanation of everything, I’d like to validate my idea a bit. Would it be beneficial to have a shorthand Optional operator in Swift? Currently, when initializing a variable with a non-optional value, the only way to make it optional is by using an explicit type, like this:

let myOptionalString: String? = “str”

This syntax can be cumbersome, especially for types with longer names. Now, there’s a force unwrap operator in Swift that allows you to put an optional value into a variable that’s expecting a non-optional type, like this:

let myForceUnwrappedValue = SomeInitializer()!

So, to match, and to make things shorter, do you think there should be an operator that allows developers to achieve the same effect, but without an explicit type? Like this:

let myOptionalString = “str”?

Could you guys let me know what you think? Thanks for the help!

You can always use

let myOptionalString = Optional(“str”)

instead.

Or use the code below

postfix operator / { }

postfix func / (value:String) -> String? {
    return Optional(value)
}

let string = "str"/
print(string) // Optional("str")

I try to use ? to replace /. It doesn't work. As the compiler try to think
? { } as a tuple instead of an operator.

I also tried to replace String with T. It seams that you can not use
operator function with generics.

zhaoxin

···

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 10:29 AM, Pranjal Satija via swift-evolution < swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:

Hey there,

I have a proposal I’d like to ask you guys to look at before I try to
submit it as a formal proposal on the GitHub repository. Before I write a
complete draft with a detailed explanation of everything, I’d like to
validate my idea a bit. Would it be beneficial to have a shorthand Optional
operator in Swift? Currently, when initializing a variable with a
non-optional value, the only way to make it optional is by using an
explicit type, like this:

let myOptionalString: String? = “str”

This syntax can be cumbersome, especially for types with longer names.
Now, there’s a force unwrap operator in Swift that allows you to put an
optional value into a variable that’s expecting a non-optional type, like
this:

let myForceUnwrappedValue = SomeInitializer()!

So, to match, and to make things shorter, do you think there should be an
operator that allows developers to achieve the same effect, but without an
explicit type? Like this:

let myOptionalString = “str”?

Could you guys let me know what you think? Thanks for the help!
_______________________________________________
swift-evolution mailing list
swift-evolution@swift.org
https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution

--

Owen Zhao