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Update API Naming Guidelines and Rewrite Set APIs Accordingly

Introduction

When SE-0006, Apply API Guidelines to the Standard Library was proposed, the lack of an acceptable naming convention for some mutating/nonmutating method pairs meant that the APIs of SetAlgebra, Set<T> and OptionSet<T> were not adjusted accordingly. This proposal remedies both problems by:

  1. establishing the necessary naming conventions and

  2. applying the corresponding changes to the Set APIs. A few other issues in these APIs are cleaned up along the way (details below).

For reference as you read this proposal, you may be interested in the following links:

Fixing the API Guidelines

The guidelines say that method calls with side-effects should read as verb phrases, and those without side-effects should read as noun phrases. They also describe how to name mutating/nonmutating method pairs accordingly: starting with the assumption that the fundamental operation can be described by a verb, we are to use the ed or ing suffix to create a noun phrase for the nonmutating operation.

The problem is that in some cases, the operation's only natural description is as a noun. Consider the union of two sets, or the remainder when dividing two integers. In these cases, we have a suitable name for the non-mutating operation, and we need to create a name that reads as a verb phrase for its mutating counterpart. The proposed solution is to use the form prefix, so that

x.formUnion(y)

is equivalent to

x = x.union(y)

Changes to the Set APIs

This proposal changes APIs of the SetAlgebra protocol, which propagate into the library's models of those protocols, Set<T> and OptionSet<T>. Most of the changes amount to a straightforward application of the new guidelines.

Usage Example:

x = y.union(z)
y.formUnion(z)                         // y = y.union(z)

x = y.intersection(z)
y.formIntersection(z)                 // y = y.intersection(z)

x = y.subtracting(z)
y.subtract(z)                         // y = y.subtracting(z)

x = y.symmetricDifference(z)
y.formSymmetricDifference(z)         // y = y.symmetricDifference(z)

if x.contains(c) { ... }

y.insert(a)
y.remove(b)
y.update(with: c)

if x.isSubset(of: y) 
   && y.isStrictSubset(of: z)
   && z.isDisjoint(with: x)
   && y.isSuperset(of: z)
   && x.isStrictSuperset(of: z)
   && !y.isEmpty { ... }

Other Changes

There are a few notable changes to SetAlgebra that go beyond simple renaming:

  • The concept of elements subsuming or being disjoint with other elements has been dropped from the documentation, along with the corresponding static methods of SetAlgebra. The idea was only used in describing the semantics of the remove method, but we have found a simpler way to describe those semantics.

  • The semantics of remove's return value have changed slightly, to make them more useful for OptionSets. When e is a “compound option” with several bits set in its rawValue, and option set s has a strict subset of those bits set in its raw value, s.remove(e) no longer returns nil. Instead, it returns s.intersection(e). This change only affects OptionSet, not Set.

  • The semantics of someSet.insert(newMember) method have been changed slightly, so that if newMember was already a member of someSet, it has no effect. This change in behavior is unnoticeable under most circumstances, but can be observed if equal Element instances can be distinguished. For example, when Element is a class, instances may be distinguished using the === operator. The new behavior matches that of NSMutableSet.insert, and is also likely to be more efficient. Users needing the old behavior can always use the new update(with:) method, described below. In practice this change only affects Set, not OptionSet.

  • someSet.insert(newMember) now returns a (discardable) pair containing an indication of whether the insertion took place and the Element equal to newMember that is a member of the set after the insertion. This change is an expression of the principle that the library shouldn't discard potentially useful and information that may have a non-trivial cost to compute.

  • A new update(with: newMember) API was added, to provide the previous unconditional insertion semantics of the insert API.

Detailed Changes

You can follow this link to see exactly how SetAlgebra has changed. As noted earlier, all other API changes proposed here are a consequence of applying exactly the same changes to Set and OptionSet.

Impact on existing code

Like all renamings, this is a source-breaking change that can be largely automated by a migrator.

To avoid any semantic change one could consider automatically migrating uses of someSet.insert(newMember) to someSet.update(with: newMember), though the chances that a user actually wants the semantics of update(with:_) where she has used insert(_) seem quite slim.

The slight change to the result of remove is unlikely to affect anyone, but one could consider issuing a warning during migration to inspect the usage if the returned value from someOptionSet.remove(x) is not discarded.

Alternatives considered

Naming Guidelines

So many alternatives to the form prefix convention were considered that it's impossible to enumerate them all, but only one candidate stands out as being particularly worthy of mention: the InPlace suffix that was previously used in the standard library. InPlace has one major advantage over form: the fact that it is a suffix benefits grouping in alphabetical catalogs of method names and tools that do code completion by prefix. However, the InPlace suffix has a few major weaknesses:

  • Reading someNounInPlace as a verb phrase requires reading someNoun as a verb. A willingness to pretend that nouns are verbs undermines some basic principles of the API guidelines, which prescribe different uses for different parts of speech.

  • InPlace could more grammatically be applied to a verb, which means you'd really need to read the guidelines carefully to understand how to use it properly. A knowledge of common English doesn't lead toward properly applying it.

  • InPlace is visually heavyweight when compared to form, and quite distasteful to some.

Set API

Since operation nouns tend to arise in mathematical domains, we considered avoiding math terms and instead using a more “container-like” API for sets:

x = y.insertingContents(of: z)
y.insertContents(of: z)

x = y.removingContents(notInCommonWith: z)
y.removeContents(notInCommonWith: z)

x = y.removingContents(inCommonWith: z)
y.removeContents(inCommonWith: z)

x = y.insertingContents(removingCommonContents: z)
y.insertContents(removingCommonContents: z)

if x.contains(c) { ... }

y.insert(a)
y.remove(b)

if x.allContentsAreContained(in: y) 
   && y.allContentsAndMoreAreContained(in: z)
   && z.hasNoContentsInCommon(with: x)
   && y.containsAllContents(of: z)
   && x.containsAllContentsAndMore(of: z)
   && !y.isEmpty { ... }

Aside from the obvious awkwardness of some of the resulting code, we felt that the loss of the immediately-recognizable semantics of terms-of-art such as union and intersection was too great a cost.

We also considered being much more explicit about the semantics of the insert(_) / remove(_) / update(with:) suite of methods, leading to usage like:

s.insertIfAbsent(x)
s.removeIfPresent(x)
s.insert(replacingIfPresent: x)

In the end, we thought, the extra words would not add clarity to typical uses of these APIs, where equal set elements are treated as indistinguishable.