Merge pull request swiftlang#213 from PatrickPijnappel/patch-1

Create proposal to change IteratorType post-nil guarantee

proposals/XXXX-iterator-post-nil-guarantee.md

@@ -0,0 +1,121 @@
+# Change IteratorType post-nil guarantee
+
+* Proposal: [SE-NNNN](https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/NNNN-name.md)
+* Author(s): [Patrick Pijnappel](https://github.com/PatrickPijnappel)
+* Status: **Awaiting review**
+* Review manager: TBD
+
+## Introduction
+
+Currently, the documentation for `IteratorType.next()` has the precondition
+that when calling `next()`, no preceding call to `next()` should have returned
+`nil`, and in fact encourages implementations to raise a `preconditionFailure()`
+for violations of this requirement. However, all current 27 `IteratorType`
+implementations in the standard library return `nil` indefinitely. Many users
+are likely unaware of the precondition, expecting all iterators to return
+`nil` indefinitely and writing code that might rely on this assumption. Such
+code will usually run fine, until someone does in fact pass in an iterator not
+repeating `nil` (it's a silent corner case).
+
+Swift-evolution thread: [\[Proposal\] Change guarantee for GeneratorType.next() to always return nil past end](http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.swift.evolution/8519)
+
+Pull-request: [#1702](https://github.com/apple/swift/pull/1702)
+
+## Motivation
+
+While not overwhelmingly common, it is relatively easy to write code based on the
+assumption `nil` will be returned indefinitely:
+
+``` swift
+// Example based on standard library code (Sequence.swift)
+while let element = iterator.next() {
+  if condition(element) {
+    foo(element) // call foo on first element satisfying condition
+    break
+  }
+}
+while let element = iterator.next() {
+  bar(element) // call bar on remaining elements
+}
+
+// Another example
+switch (iterator.next(), iterator.next()) {
+// ...
+}
+```
+
+Even though this can be trivially rewritten to not rely on post-`nil` behavior,
+the user won't perform this rewrite if they are unaware of the precondition. In
+their testing the code will work fine, and likely will in almost every case,
+except when passing the rare iterator that doesn't repeat `nil`.
+
+## Proposed solution
+
+Bring the guarantee in line with the common expectation, and require iterators
+to return `nil` indefinitely.
+
+Requiring `nil` to be returned indefinitely does require the implementors of
+custom `IteratorType` conformances to respect this, but this is likely already
+the expectation for most users. Most iterators already get this as a natural
+consequence of their implementation (as is the case with all current standard
+library iterators), but otherwise they can simply track a `done` flag to do so.
+It should be noted that this requirement would also affect closures passed to
+`AnyIterator`.
+
+### Performance considerations
+The original rationale for introducing the precondition was because of concerns
+it might add storage and performance burden to some implementations of
+`IteratorType` (see [here](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.swift.evolution/8532)).
+
+However, in light of implementation experience, there are a few observations we
+can make:
+- These cases are rare. The standard library currently has no iterators that
+require extra state or branches to return `nil` indefinitely. The iterator for
+the proposed `takeWhile()` ([SE-0045](https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/proposals/0045-scan-takewhile-dropwhile.md))
+would be the first occurance in the standard library.
+- Even in such cases, in the common case the calling code doesn't rely on
+post-`nil` behavior (e.g. `for in`, `map`, etc.) this extra storage and
+branching can usually optimized away.
+- Not having the post-`nil` guarantee can sometimes add storage and performance
+burden for the caller instead, e.g. when an iterator somehow buffers it's
+underlying iterator. This in contrast can usually not be optimized away. For
+example, the standard library's UTF-8/UTF-16 decoding has 4 instead of 3 branches
+per character for ASCII because of this.
+
+## Detailed design
+
+Original guarantee:
+
+``` swift
+/// Advance to the next element and return it, or `nil` if no next
+/// element exists.
+///
+/// - Precondition: `next()` has not been applied to a copy of `self`
+///   since the copy was made, and no preceding call to `self.next()`
+///   has returned `nil`.  Specific implementations of this protocol		
+///   are encouraged to respond to violations of this requirement by		
+///   calling `preconditionFailure("...")`.
+```
+
+Proposed guarantee:
+
+``` swift
+/// Advance to the next element and return it, or `nil` if no next element
+/// exists.  Once `nil` has been returned, all subsequent calls return `nil`.
+///
+/// - Precondition: `next()` has not been applied to a copy of `self`
+///   since the copy was made.
+```
+
+## Impact on existing code
+
+All `IteratorType` implementations in the standard library already comply with
+the new guarantee. It is likely most existing custom iterators will as well,
+however some might be rendered in violation of their guarantee by the change.
+
+## Alternatives considered
+
+- Require `IteratorType` to not crash but keep the return value up to specific
+implementations. This allows them to use it for other behavior e.g. repeating
+the sequence after `nil` is returned. This however retains most of the problems
+of the original guaranteee described in this proposal.