Please don't be melodramatic, nobody is asking you to make that choice. Introducing this accommodation for a particular type of coding in Swift does not deprecate any other aspect of the powerfully abstract Swift String model. The suggested feature is opt-in for those that need it.
It doesn't work like that though. If a feature is added to the language then people will use it. Then whether I want to or not I will encounter it – in sample code, in Swift library code, in code written by other people that I'm asked to work on, have to reason about.
I don't understand why we need an expression like 'a' + 1 in the first place. Wouldn't an expression like 'a'.asciiOffset(1) be sufficient? And if we do so we can avoid 'x' + 'y' from the beginning.
Such operations appear natural because our expected alphabetical order happens to match the order of the ASCII code. Expressions like '*' + '1' are never natural. I think using method is clearer to make it explicit that it is using ASCII order.
1 Like
i’ve gone back and reworked the proposal based on the feedback from this thread. since it is a significant departure from the proposal in its current form, i decided to post it as a new thread. here is the link for anyone interested:
1 Like