Additive inverse of number literals

Search Terms

Using unary minus on variable that is of number-literal type. Negative number literals.

Suggestion

This is a specific case of #26382. My proposal is simply that if we apply unary minus on an expression whose type is a union of number literal types, the result should be a union of their additive inverses:

declare var a: 1 | 2 | 3;
const b = -a; // should be -1 | -2 | -3

Furthermore we could add a unary minus type operator:

-(42) === -42
-(A | B) === -A | -B
-number === number
-(not number) // error

Both should be very easy and uncontroversial to implement.

Use Cases

function compare(a: C, b: C): -1 | 0 | 1;

function reverseCompare(a: C, b: C): -1 | 0 | 1
{
  return -compare(a, b); // shouldn't throw an error
}

The type operator would be just for sake of completeness

Checklist

My suggestion meets these guidelines:

• This wouldn't be a breaking change in existing TypeScript/JavaScript code
• This wouldn't change the runtime behavior of existing JavaScript code
• This could be implemented without emitting different JS based on the types of the expressions
• This isn't a runtime feature (e.g. library functionality, non-ECMAScript syntax with JavaScript output, etc.)
• This feature would agree with the rest of TypeScript's Design Goals.

Empieza revisando la propuesta relacionada en el issue #26382 y el comportamiento de comprobación de tipos del menos unario en uniones de literales numéricos. Se considera terminado cuando los ejemplos infieren -1 | -2 | -3 y reverseCompare es aceptado, mientras que los operandos no numéricos no válidos siguen produciendo errores; en el issue no se nombran archivos fuente ni pruebas.