rokucommunity / rokucommunity/brighterscript

optionals, use question mark at the end of a var name to support assignment to invalid

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BrighterScript New Language Feature
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
208
Forks
68
Avg merge
8h 39m
Merged PRs (30d)
39

Description

Similar to Type Declaration Characters such as $ (String), % (Integer), ! (Float), # (Double), & (LongInteger), which don't allow assignments of invalid, we could make the language null-safe by never allowing assignments of invalid unless the var name ends with ? by creating a runtime error.

Like in Swift, this value could be an associative array with two possible values in it, none or some, with the associated value. (Swift does that with an Enum). To assign an optional to a non-optional, an unwrapping function is needed which releases the some value or provides an alternative if none is encountered.

Contributor guide

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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

Start by locating the existing handling of type declaration characters and invalid-value assignments in the repository. Compare the proposed question-mark optional syntax and Swift-like none/some model with current language behavior; done would require an agreed design, implementation scope, and tests for optional assignment and unwrapping.

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
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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