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60 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
60 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
# Unsealed table assignment creates an optional property
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**Status**: Implemented
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## Summary
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In Luau, tables have a state, which can, among others, be "unsealed".
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An unsealed table is one that we are still constructing. Currently
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assigning a table literal to an unsealed table does not introduce new
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properties, so it is a type error if they are read.
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We would like to change this so that assigning a table
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literal to an unsealed table creates an optional property.
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## Motivation
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In lua-apps, there is testing code which (simplified) looks like:
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```lua
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local t = { u = {} }
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t = { u = { p = 37 } }
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t = { u = { q = "hi" } }
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local x: number? = t.u.p
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local y: string? = t.u.q
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```
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Currently, this code doesn't typecheck, due to `p` and `q` being unknown properties of `t.u`.
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## Design
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In order to support this idiom, we propose that assigning a table
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to an unsealed table should add an optional property.
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For example, before this change the type of `t` is `{ u: {} }`,
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and after this change is `{ u: { p: number?, q: number? } }`.
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This is implemented by adding a case to unification where the supertype
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is an unsealed table, and the subtype is a table with extra properties.
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Currently the extra properties are ignored, but with this change we would
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add the property to the unsealed table (making it optional if necessary).
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Since tables with optional properties of the same type are subtypes of
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tables with indexers, this allows table literals to be used as dictionaries,
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for example the type of `t` is a subtype of `{ u: { [string]: number } }`.
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Note that we need to add an optional property, otherwise the example above will not typecheck.
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```lua
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local t = { u = {} }
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t = { u = { p = 37 } }
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t = { u = { q = "hi" } } -- fails because there's no u.p
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```
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## Drawbacks
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The implementation of this proposal introduces optional types during unification,
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and so needs access to an allocator.
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## Alternatives
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Rather than introducing optional properties, we could introduce an indexer. For example we could infer the type of
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`t` as `{ u: { [string]: number } }`.
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