alt Hacker NewsArbitrary subranges of int types were available in Ada for over 40 years via static enforcement via Spark and compilers were able to optimize them nicely.
For a system language I wish Rust would support such things rather than coming with NonZero hacks.
Replies
BoingBoomTschak • yesterday at 10:19 PM
Can it do holes like this?
(typep 3 '(or (integer 0 10) (integer 50 100)));; => T➕ show 1 reply
This is called "pattern types" in Rust land, as your parent mentioned, and is exactly the kind of work being talked about.
NonZero isn't a hack: it's an example of a common pattern. If pattern types were available today, you'd still want NonZero, as an example of a pretty standard pattern.
The idea is, as always: prove out the specific version, then generalize.