microsoft / microsoft/TypeScript

Support some non-structural (nominal) type matching

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Description

Proposal: support non-structural typing (e.g. new user-defined base-types, or some form of basic nominal typing). This allows programmer to have more refined types supporting frequently used idioms such as:

  1. Indexes that come from different tables. Because all indexes are strings (or numbers), it's easy to use the an index variable (intended for one table) with another index variable intended for a different table. Because indexes are the same type, no error is given. If we have abstract index classes this would be fixed.

  2. Certain classes of functions (e.g. callbacks) can be important to be distinguished even though they have the same type. e.g. "() => void" often captures a side-effect producing function. Sometimes you want to control which ones are put into an event handler. Currently there's no way to type-check them.

  3. Consider having 2 different interfaces that have different optional parameters but the same required one. In typescript you will not get a compiler error when you provide one but need the other. Sometimes this is ok, but very often this is very not ok and you would love to have a compiler error rather than be confused at run-time.

Proposal (with all type-Error-lines removed!):

// Define FooTable and FooIndex
nominal FooIndex = string;  // Proposed new kind of nominal declaration.
interface FooTable {
  [i: FooIndex]: { foo: number };
}
let s1: FooIndex;
let t1: FooTable;

// Define BarTable and BarIndex
nominal BarIndex = string; // Proposed new kind of nominal declaration.
interface BarTable {
  [i: BarIndex]: { bar: string };
}
let s2: BarIndex;
let t2: BarTable;

// For assignment from base-types and basic structures: no type-overloading is needed.
s1 = 'foo1';
t1 = {};
t1[s1] = { foo: 1 };

s2 = 'bar1';
t2 = { 'bar1': { bar: 'barbar' }};

console.log(s2 = s1); // Proposed to be type error.
console.log(s2 == s1); // Proposed to be type error.
console.log(s2 === s1); // Proposed to be type error.

t1[s2].foo = 100; // Gives a runtime error. Proposed to be type error.
t1[s1].foo = 100;

function BadFooTest(t: FooTable) {
  if (s2 in t) {  // Proposed to be type error.
    console.log('cool');
    console.log(t[s2].foo); // Proposed to be type error.
  }
}

function GoodBarTest(t: BarTable) {
  if (s2 in t) {
    console.log('cool');
    console.log(t[s2].bar);
  }
}

BadFooTest(t1); // Gives runtime error;
BadFooTest(t2); // No runtime error, Proposed to be type error.
GoodBarTest(t1); // Gives runtime error; Proposed to be type error.
GoodBarTest(t2);

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by reviewing the proposed nominal declarations and the index, callback, and interface use cases; done would require an agreed design and type-checking behavior for the listed invalid assignments and calls.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
typescript
Domain
compilers
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

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