> On Nov 30, 2017, at 5:21 PM, Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution > <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 5:24 PM, Nate Cook <natec...@apple.com > <mailto:natec...@apple.com>> wrote: >> On Nov 30, 2017, at 4:30 PM, Xiaodi Wu via swift-evolution >> <swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote: >> >> On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 3:58 PM, Dave DeLong via swift-evolution >> <swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote: >> >> >>> On Nov 30, 2017, at 2:48 PM, Jonathan Hull via swift-evolution >>> <swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote: >>> >>> I would personally go with: >>> >>> Int.random //Returns a random Int >> >> “Type.random” is so rarely used as to not be worth the addition, IMO. If you >> really need a random element from the *entire* domain, then I think you >> should have to manually create the ClosedRange<T> yourself. >> >>> Int.random(in: ClosedRange<Int>) //Works for Comparable types. Gives a >>> result from the closed range. Closed Range is never empty. >> >> This is redundant. In order to pick a random element, you’re saying I should >> have to do “Int.random(0 ..< 10)”? The redundancy here is that I have to >> specify Int twice: once for the “.random” call, and again for the type of >> the range. We can do better than that. > > I don’t see how this is redundant—do you mean that you’d need to write out > the type name instead of writing `(0..<10).random()!`? I continue to be of > the opinion that picking a random integer/floating-point value/Boolean and > picking a random element from a collection are two different operations. Yes, > there’s overlap between the two, but they’re different enough that having two > ways to choose an integer between 0 and 10 would be fine. > > As I wrote elsewhere, if they're sufficiently different enough, then they > ought to have distinct names. If they are not, then there ought to be only > one of them. I'm no longer sure myself of which one I'd prefer, but in no > case should there be two things named "random." > > If the proposal to make `IndexDistance == Int` is accepted, then ranges > cannot conform to Collection and we encounter some interesting difficulties > attempting to index into such a collection to pick a random value.
I'd like to put forth that Gameplay Kit offers a perfectly cromulent model of random number generation and API. Why not take that as a starting point, Swiftify it so it becomes a cross platform solution, and then apply the specific questions of sequences, collections, and indices as a second step? I don't support intermingling random functionality with existing core types. -- E
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