Feature Request: Assertion Functions

I would like annotation and type checking that supports and implements TypeScript's "Assertion Functions":
https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/release-notes/typescript-3-7.html#assertion-functions

It's similar to other open feature requests for type predicates / narrowing except it avoids the need for if statements and to return a boolean from the function where true means a variable is of a given type and false if it's not that type.

I mentioned this briefly in another open issue but the original issue was for implementing narrowing/type predicates:
https://github.com/LuaLS/lua-language-server/issues/704#issuecomment-1484060572

This TypeScript code illustrates the feature:

function assertIsString(val: any): asserts val is string {
  if (typeof val !== "string") {
    throw new AssertionError("Not a string!");
  }
}

This tells the linter that the argument passed to the val parameter is a string if no assertion raised an error.

In Lua, this might look like the following:

---@param val any
---@asserts val is string
local function assertIsString(val)
  assert(type(val) == "string", "Not a string!")
end

---@param str any
local function yell(str)
  assertIsString(str)  
  -- No error was thrown! Therefore, the next line should not be marked as a warning and `str` must be a string.
  return str:upper()
end

The problem at the moment is that I need to add ---@cast val string after every usage of assertIsString:

local function yell(str)
  assertIsString(str)  
  ---@cast str string
  return str:upper()  -- LuaLS complains that str might not be a string unless I cast it
end

There is no other way of telling LuaLS that the result has been confirmed to be a string unless the assert expression is directly in the same body of code.

I would suggest adding narrowing with type predicates first as this feature request seems like the next feature on top of that feature, but I'd like to see what people think :)

Thank you!

Bắt đầu bằng cách đọc tài liệu tham khảo về assertion-functions của TypeScript 3.7 và issue 704 được liên kết về type-predicate, sau đó kiểm tra cách các chú thích @cast hiện có thực hiện narrowing. Công việc được coi là hoàn tất khi một chú thích assertion của Lua có thể thu hẹp đối số sau một lời gọi assertion thành công, để ví dụ yell chấp nhận str:upper() mà không cần cast riêng.