>> On Dec 27, 2015, at 10:37 AM, Joe Groff <jgr...@apple.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Dec 26, 2015, at 11:22 PM, Douglas Gregor via swift-evolution 
>> <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> Here’s a proposal draft to allow one to name any function in Swift. In 
>> effect, it’s continuing the discussion of retrieving getters and setters as 
>> functions started by Michael Henson here:
>> 
>>      
>> https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20151207/002168.html
>> 
>> the proposal follows, and is available here as well:
>> 
>>      
>> https://github.com/DougGregor/swift-evolution/blob/generalized-naming/proposals/0000-generalized-naming.md
>> 
>> Comments appreciated!
>> 
>> Generalized Naming for Any Function
>> 
[snip]
> 
>> Getters and setters can be written using dotted syntax within the back-ticks:
>> 
>> let specificTitle = button.`currentTitle.get` // has type () -> String?
>> let otherTitle = UIButton.`currentTitle.get`  // has type (UIButton) -> () 
>> -> String?
>> let setTintColor = button.`tintColor.set`     // has type (UIColor!) -> ()
>> The same syntax works with subscript getters and setters as well, using the 
>> full name of the subscript:
>> 
>> extension Matrix {
>>   subscript (row row: Int) -> [Double] {
>>     get { ... }
>>     set { ... }
>>   }
>> }
>> 
>> let getRow = someMatrix.`subscript(row:).get` // has type (Int) -> () -> 
>> [Double]
>> let setRow = someMatrix.`subscript(row:).set` // has type (Int) -> 
>> ([Double]) -> ()
> At least as far as pure Swift is concerned, for unapplied access, like 
> `UIButton.currentTitle`, I think it would be more consistent with the way 
> method references works for that to give you the getter (or lens) without 
> decoration. instance.instanceMethod has type Args -> Ret, and 
> Type.instanceMethod has type Self -> Args -> Ret; by analogy, since 
> instance.instanceProperty has type Ret or inout Ret, it's reasonable to 
> expect Type.instanceProperty to have type Self -> [inout] Ret.

Yes, that seems reasonable.

> Forming a getter or setter partially applied to an instance feels unmotivated 
> to me—{ button.currentTitle } or { button.currentTitle = $0 } already work, 
> and are arguably clearer than this syntax.

I’m not strongly motivated by it in and of itself; rather, I like the idea of 
being able to get at all of the functions (for completeness/consistency), 
partly because of the Objective-C selector issue.

> I acknowledge that this leaves forming selectors from setters out to dry, but 
> I feel like that's something that could be incorporated into a "lens" design 
> along with typed selectors. As a rough sketch, we could say that the 
> representation of @convention(selector) T -> inout U is a pair of 
> getter/setter selectors,

I should weigh in over on a typed-selectors thread, but my personal view is 
that typed selectors are a well-designed feature that isn't worth doing: one 
would probably not use them outside of interoperability with Objective-C. To 
make that work, we'd need a Clang feature as well (to express the types), then 
all of the relevant Objective-C APIs would need to adopt it for us to see the 
benefits. On iOS, we are talking about a relatively small number of APIs 
(100-ish), and many of those have blocks/closure-based variants that are 
preferred. 

> and provide API on Selector to grab the individual selectors from that, maybe 
> Selector(getterFor: UIView.currentTitle)/(setterFor: UIView.currentTitle)

Sure. I suspect that retrieving the selector of a getter/setter will be fairly 
rare, so I'm fine with that operation being ugly. 

> . I don't think get/set is a good interface for working with Swift 
> properties, so I don't like the idea of building in language support to 
> codify it beyond what's needed for ObjC interaction.

That is an excellent point. I think you've convinced me to drop the 
getter/setter part of this: lenses are the right abstraction for working with 
properties, and we can handle ObjC getter/setter in some other way. 

>> Can we drop the back-ticks? It's very tempting to want to drop the 
>> back-ticks entirely, because something like
>> 
>> let fn = someView.insertSubview(_:at:)
>> can be correctly parsed as a reference to insertSubview(_:at:). However, it 
>> breaks down at the margins, e.g., with getter/setter references or 
>> no-argument functions:
>> 
>> extension Optional {
>>   func get() -> T { return self! }
>> }
>> 
>> let fn1 = button.currentTitle.get   // getter or Optional<String>.get?
>> let fn2 = set.removeAllElements()   // call or reference?
> From what I remember, the bigger concern with allowing foo(bar:bas:) without 
> backticks is parser error recovery. The unambiguity with call syntax depends 
> on having the `:)` token pair at the end. The edit distance between 
> foo(bar:bas:) and a call foo(bar: bas) or work-in-progress call foo(bar: x, 
> bas: ) is pretty slight, and would be tricky to give good diagnostics for. If 
> we felt confident we could give good diagnostics, I'd support removing the 
> backticks.
> 
> -Joe

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