Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

I think you should explore the direction of removing NilLiteralConvertible entirely, together with nil. My example could instead use: let tree: JSON = ["name": "Alex", "age": 20, "email": .null] Rationale would be that when nil was added to the language, enum constructors could not omit their

Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

I know I know. I should have framed this as removing NilLiteralConvertible from Optional and supplying it with a new keyword. I don’t find nil to adequately represent what it is doing with optionals. It *looks* like it is setting a object to nil when this really isn’t the case. The optional

Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

> On Jun 8, 2016, at 11:54 AM, Антон Жилин via swift-evolution > wrote: > > The difference between nil and .none is that the former is more "generic" > than the latter. > > NilLiteralConvertible protocol expresses types that can contain "null" as > legal

[swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

The difference between nil and .none is that the former is more "generic" than the latter. NilLiteralConvertible protocol expresses types that can contain "null" as legal values. `nil` does not have a type, it's just a token that is casted to whatever NilLiteralConvertible type is expected.

Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

nil is not only usable with Optionals, although that is its most common usage. Any type implementing NilLiteralConvertible can be initialized with a nil literal -DW > On Jun 8, 2016, at 10:45 AM, Brandon Knope via swift-evolution > wrote: > > This is precisely the

Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

This is precisely the point I was trying to make. “nil” is a holdover from other languages; i.e. we are comfortable with using it. I think there are better alternatives to consider. However, when evaluating whether it makes sense with swift, I think it fails some of the criteria for inclusion.

Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

Reading the thread.. I wonder if we need "nil" at all, why not use (just a question, not a suggestion) .none ? I.e. now we can use nil and .none in the same situations, .none is just 2 symbols longer, '.none' highlight that Optional is a special type (that there is .some(T) in Optional), no

Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

I'am not either for removing nil nor renaming it none, I think that they are conceptually different things. This syntactic sugar brings unfortunately many things around. One fastidious thing is it multiple semantics: As null pointer. As none value. I am personally not favorable for multiples

Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

None would be similar to Null or nothing about the types in that sense which None is not a type. Nil would be interpret as Int, Float, String, etc On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 9:17 AM, Dany St-Amant via swift-evolution < swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote: > No clue as to the origins, but if you

Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

It depends how you frame it. When I see nil I think of 0 or a pointer. let someInt: Int? = nil Does someInt really have a value of 0? Is it really a pointer (because it looks like one). let someInt: Int? = none let someInt: Int? = .none - Doesn't look like a pointer and can't be

Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

That’s not quite what I meant. nil feels right to refer to an object-you can say “Foo is nil”, but you can’t really say that “Foo is none”, since while you can’t really use none as an adjective, as you can with nil. It’s really about what flows right-none is the opposite of some, but nil isn’t.

Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

That's exactly the point I was going for. none makes more sense in this context than nil in my opinion Brandon > On Jun 7, 2016, at 8:10 PM, Saagar Jha wrote: > > Well, some is the opposite of none in that if I don’t have some, I have none. > nil is just a carry-over

Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

Well, some is the opposite of none in that if I don’t have some, I have none. nil is just a carry-over from Objective-C. On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 5:07 PM Brandon Knope via swift-evolution < swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote: > I guess for me it comes down to this: > > *Why were some and none chosen

Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

I guess for me it comes down to this: Why were some and none chosen for as the cases for Optional? As an extension of that, why does nil then represent none instead of the obvious none? There has to be a reason why it's not: enum Optional { case some(T) case nil } None seems a lot more

Re: [swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

There are NilLiteralConvertible types other than Optional, but they’re dwindling now that pointer nullability is represented by Optional. That said, I’m not convinced renaming “nil” is worth it at this point. Similarity with other languages is still a good thing. It’s true that we might not

[swift-evolution] Discussion: Why is "nil" not "none"

Quick thought: If optional has a .none case, wouldn't it be more consistent to rename nil to none? Also, would nil make it into Swift if not for other languages? It also might make it somewhat clearer: var someInt: Int? = none //looks less like a pointer and more like a value of nothing 1.