In the implemented proposal they say something to the effect of “type parameter pack stores a list of zero or more type parameters” in a few different places. What's the syntax to create a generic type or an instance of a generic type with zero type parameters? There was a followup proposal that was also implemented in 5.9 that includes this snippet
struct V<each T> {}
V<>.self
But this code doesn’t compile in 5.9. It complains that <> isn’t a valid operator.
postfix operator <> isn’t even a good defense, as currently it does not correctly select that interpretation in cases of ambiguity: SwiftFiddle - Swift Online Playground