> On Oct 13, 2017, at 8:28 PM, Xiaodi Wu <xiaodi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 12:03 PM, Kevin Nattinger <sw...@nattinger.net
> <mailto:sw...@nattinger.net>> wrote:
>> On Oct 13, 2017, at 6:52 AM, Xiaodi Wu <xiaodi...@gmail.com
>> <mailto:xiaodi...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> You’re welcome to bikeshed the entire API surface area of sequences and
>> collections, but you won’t be the first to explore this area. A number of us
>> looked into this area in the past few years and did not reach a measurable
>> improved result.
>
> I don’t need or want to bikeshed the entire sequence and collection surface
> area, I just want to fix one clear and GLARING issue:
>
> A Set is NOT a sequence.
>
> Note that this goes for dictionaries and any other unordered “sequences" as
> well.
>
> That was in an early draft of my original email, but I dropped it because I
> was afraid people would just stop reading and dismiss the idea out-of-hand
> without considering the problem or arguments. Apparently I should have at
> least put it at the bottom, so sorry if the root issue was unclear.
>
>> Sequences can be ordered or unordered,
>
> You seem to be confusing the English word “sequence” with the (current) Swift
> protocol “Sequence." A sequence is, by definition, ordered. Not enforcing
> that in a protocol does not override the English language, and as this entire
> thread demonstrates, causes issues further on down the line.
>
> We are discussing the Swift protocol `Sequence`. It really doesn't matter at
> all what the English word "sequence" means, and any difference between the
> English word and the Swift term is emphatically *not* the root cause of the
> issue. Here's why:
>
> * A Swift `Sequence` is, to put it simplistically, a thing that can be
> iterated over in a `for...in` loop. If it would make you happy, for the rest
> of the discussion, let's suppose we called the protocol `ForLoopable` instead
> of `Sequence`.
ForLoopable is so ugly. Since we’re just iterating over the elements, how
about, oh, say, `Iterable`? Hey, that looks familiar.
>
> * `Set` should conform to `ForLoopable`. (This I state as a premise; if you
> disagree with the notion that we should be able to iterate over the elements
> of an instance of `Set` with a `for...in loop`, then it's clearly a whole
> other discussion and not a question of what the English word "sequence"
> means.)
Obviously, `Set: Iterable`. I don’t think I’ve said anything to suggest you
shouldn’t be able to iterate over unordered collections.
>
> * If a type `T` conforms to `ForLoopable` and an instance `t` of that type
> has at least one element, then *something* has to be the first element in a
> `for element in t { ... }` loop. Put another way, every instance of a type
> that conforms to `ForLoopable` must have at least one publicly observable
> order (although, intriguingly, I'm not sure it has to be a repeatable one).
> It is possible, therefore, to have a semantic answer to the question of which
> element is `first` or (if finite) `last`; one can also `drop(while:)`, etc.,
> and perform lexicographical comparisons.
As a side effect of Swift being a procedural language each iteration happens to
occur in some order, yes, but that order is meaningless and reflects nothing
about the Set itself. In fact, I’d say that `first`, `last`, etc. are not even
defined on the original Set per se, only on the specific order that a
particular iteration resulted in. And that order is not necessarily
predictable, nor necessarily stable, as you yourself said.
Consider an Iterable that gives a different order every time it’s iterated.
Should calling `.first` or `last` give a different object every time? That’s
absurd.
Should an object lexicographically compare not equal to itself? Even more
absurd.
On the other hand, if I have a collection of objects that I want iterated in a
particular order, I can use a container that iterates in a specific, known,
well-defined way, and use that to construct the sequence of objects. That’s
clearly an Iterable collection, but the guarantee is stronger than that. Since
it iterates objects in a specific sequence, the logical way to express that
would be `Sequence: Iterable`. Again, we’ve seen that before.
Now, since a Sequence is guaranteed to iterate the same every time, suddenly
our `first`, `last`, `drop*`, etc. methods have a meaning inherent to the
collection itself, rather than a specific iteration.
`first` is the first object in the Sequence. It doesn’t matter how the sequence
came to be in that order; it doesn’t matter whether or not the sequence has
already been iterated or how many times. `first` is the first object that is,
was, and always will be presented by the Sequence’s Iterator. (Until the
collection is mutated, obviously).
To summarize,
A Set has no intrinsic order. You can iterate over it, and a specific iteration
of a set has an order, but that order is not tied to the Set itself beyond
including all and only the items therein. Therefore, the Set itself has no
intrinsic `first`, `last`, lexicographical comparison, etc.; only its
iterations do, and they are not themselves Sets.
A Sequence does have an intrinsic order. The order of iteration reflects the
order inherent to the Sequence. Therefore, a Sequence has a `first`, `last`,
lexicographical comparison, etc.
Just in case it’s not obvious, `Set` here is pretty much interchangeable with
any other unordered iterable.
>> public protocol Iterable {
>> associatedtype Iterator: IteratorProtocol
>> func map<T>(...) -> [T] // Iterable where .Iterator.Element == T
>> func filter(...) -> [Iterator.Element] // Iterable where .Iterator.Element
>> == Self.Iterator.Element
>> func forEach(...)
>> func makeIterator() -> Iterator
>> var underestimatedCount: Int { get }
>> }
>>
>> public protocol Sequence: Iterable { // Maybe OrderedSequence just to make
>> the well-defined-order requirement explicit
>> associatedtype SubSequence
>> func dropFirst(...) -> SubSequence // Sequence where .Iterator.Element
>> == Self.Iterator.Element
>> func dropLast(...) -> SubSequence // " "
>> func drop(while...) -> SubSequence // " "
>> func prefix(...) -> SubSequence // " "
>> func prefix(while...) -> SubSequence // " "
>> func suffix(...) -> SubSequence // " "
>> func split(...where...) -> [SubSequence] // Iterable where
>> .Iterator.Element == (Sequence where .Iterator.Element ==
>> Self.Iterator.Element)
>> }
And just to be explicit,
struct Set: Iterable {…}
struct Dictionary: Iterable {…}
struct Array: Sequence {…}
etc.
Hopefully at some point:
struct OrderedSet: Sequence {…}
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