With expressions

[munificent]

This strawman addresses #961 and partially addresses #314. It's just a strawman right now, so I'm putting it right in the issue here. If it gets traction, I'll move this text to a real proposal document.

Motivation

The #1 open feature request for Dart is data classes. This is a Kotlin feature that gives you a lightweight way to define a class with instance fields and value semantics. You give the class a name and some fields and it implicitly a constructor, equals(), hashCode(), destructuring support, and copy(). (Scala's case classes are similar.)

This proposal relates to the last method, copy(). Several languages that lean towards immutability have language or library features to support "functional update". This means creating a new object that has all of the same state as an existing object except with a few user-specified field values replaced. In Kotlin, it looks like:

data class Name(val first: String, val last: String?)

fun main() {
  var tom = Name("Tom", "Petty")
  var jones = tom.copy(last = "Jones") // <--
  println(jones)
}

On the marked line, we create a new Name object that has the same state as Name("Tom", "Petty") except that the last name has been replaced with "Jones". (You might think code like this is odd, but it's not unusual.)

You could imagine a similar API in Dart, here implemented manually:

class Name {
  final String first;
  final String? last;

  Name(this.first, this.last);

  Name copy({String? first, String? last}) =>
      Name(first ?? this.first, last ?? this.last);
}

main() {
  var tom = Name("Tom", "Petty");
  var jones = tom.copy(last: "Jones"); // <--
  print(jones);
}

This works fine. But note that the last field is nullable. Perhaps you want to create a new Name by removing a last name. This works fine in Kotlin:

var elvis = Name("Elvis", "Costello")
var theKing = elvis.copy(last = null)
println(theKing) // "Name(first=Elvis, last=null)"

But the corresponding Dart version does not:

var elvis = Name("Elvis", "Costello");
var theKing = elvis.copy(last: null);
print(theKing);

Here, the resulting object still has last name "Costello". The problem is that in Dart, there is no way to tell if a parameter was passed or not. All you can determine was whether the default value was used. In cases where the parameter is nullable and the default is also null, there's no way to distinguish "passed null" from "didn't pass a parameter".

We are working on adding macros to Dart to let packages automate generating methods like ==(), hashCode, etc., but macros don't help here. Macros can still only express the semantics that Dart gives you. Even with a very powerful macro language, you can't metaprogram a copyWith() method that handles update of nullable fields correctly.

This proposal sidesteps the issue by adding an expression syntax to directly express functional update. It is modeled after the with expression in C# 9.0, but mapped to Dart syntax and generalized to work with any class.

With expressions

A with expression looks exactly like a regular method call to a method named with:

class Name {
  final String first;
  final String? last;

  Name({this.first, this.last});
}

main() {
  var tom = Name(first: "Tom", last: "Petty");

  var jones = tom.with(last: "Jones"); // <--

  print(jones);
}

The grammar is simply:

selector ::= '!'
  | assignableSelector
  | argumentPart
  | (`.` `?.`) `with` arguments // <-- Added.

The semantics are a straightforward static desugaring to a constructor call:

1. Determine the static type T of the left-hand receiver expression.

2. Look for an unnamed constructor on that class. It is a compile-time error if T is not a class type with an unnamed constructor.

3. Evaluate the receiver expression to a fresh variable r.

4. Generate a call to T's unnamed constructor. Any arguments in the parenthesized argument list after with are passed to directly to it.

5. Then, for each named parameters in the constructor's parameter list:

   1. If an explicit argument with that name is passed, pass that.

   2. Else, if T defines a getter with the same name, invoke the getter on r and pass the result to that parameter. It is a compile-time error if the type of the getter is not assignable to the parameter's type.

6. It is a compile-time error if any required positional or named parameters do not end up with an argument.

7. If the token before with is ?., then wrap the entire invocation in:

   (r == null ? null : <generated constructor call>)

The result is an invocation of the receiver type's unnamed constructor. That produces a new instance of the same type. Any explicit parameters are passed to the constructor. Any absent named parameters that can be filled in by accessing matching fields on the original object are.

The problem with distinguishing "passed null" from "didn't pass a parameter" is addressed by the "If an explicit argument..." clause. We use the static presence of the argument to determine whether to inherit the existing object's value, and not the argument's value at runtime.

This desugaring only relies on the getters and constructor parameter list, so it works with any class whose shape matches. Most classes initialize their fields using initializing formals (this. parameters), so any class that does so using named constructor parameters can use this syntax.

The desugaring does not rely on any properties of the class that are not already part of its static API, so using with() on a class you don't control does not affect how the class's API can be evolved over time. (For example, the behavior does not depend on whether a particular constructor parameter happens to be an initializing formal or not.)

If records are added to Dart, we can easily extend with to support them, since they already support named fields and named getters.

The main limitation is that this syntax does not work well with classes whose constructor takes positional parameters. From my investigation, that's about half of the existing Dart classes in the wild. But my suspicion is that this pattern is most useful for classes that:

• Are immutable.
• Have a fairly large number of fields.
• Where it's meaningful to create an instance from various subsets of those fields.

Classes that fit those constraints are conveniently the classes most likely to use named parameters in their constructor. Also, much of the benefit of this feature is not having to write the argument names when constructing a new instance. Constructors with only positional arguments are already fairly terse.

Null-aware with

The proposal also supports a null-aware form:

Person? findPerson(String name) => ...

var jones = find("Tom")?.with(last: "Jones");
print(jones);

This is particularly handy, because the code you have to write in the absence of that is more cumbersome since you may need to cache the intermediate computation of the receiver:

Person? findPerson(String name) => ...

var maybeTom = find("Tom");
Person? jones;
if (maybeTom != null) {
  jones = Person(first: maybeTom.first, last: maybeTom.last);
}
print(jones);

Limitations

Positional parameters

This syntax can be used with positional parameters. It just means that the arguments must also be positional. This of somewhat limited use, but it does let you more easily copy objects whose constructor takes positional and named parameters.

Note that it does not fill in missing positional parameters:

var today = DateTime.now();
var past = today.with(1940, 5);

The resulting past value does not have the same date, hour, minutes, etc. as today. Those optional positional parameters are simply omitted. This is unfortunate, and probably a footgun for the proposal. But filling those parameters in implicitly based on their name would require making the name of a positional parameter meaningful in an API, which is currently not the case in Dart.

Named constructors

The proposed syntax does not allow calling a named constructor to copy the object. We could possibly extend it to allow:

var elvis = Name("Elvis", "Costello");
var theKing = elvis.with.mononym(last: null);
print(jones);

That looks fairly strange to me, but could work.

Alternatives

No . before with

We could eliminate the leading . if we want the syntax to be more visually distinct:

var jones = tom with(last: "Jones");

I think this looks nice. Extending it to support named constructors looks more natural to me:

var theKing = elvis with.mononym(last: null);

However, it makes it harder to come up with a null-aware form that looks reasonable. Also the precedence of with relative to the receiver and any surrounding expression is less clear.

[Levi-Lesches]

The problem with distinguishing "passed null" from "didn't pass a parameter" is addressed by the "If an explicit argument..." clause. We use the static presence of the argument to determine whether to inherit the existing object's value, and not the argument's value at runtime.

So it seems the problem is the general idea of passing null vs not passing anything.

There are other issues, like #577, #140, and #137. Specifically #577 (credits to @jodinathan) and these two comments from @tatumizer and @lrhn introduce the idea of using the already-reserved default keyword to denote "no parameter". Combine that with non-const default parameters, you have a solution that has several benefits over with.

1. It doesn't have the limitations you listed
2. It can work for any method, not just copyWith
3. It can work for any top-level function, where objects aren't relevant
4. One can programmatically omit an argument depending on a condition.

It would look something like this:

class User {
  final String username;
  final String? email;
  const User({required this.username, this.email});

  // assuming non-const default parameters are allowed, this gives us what we want
  // now, passing in null makes the value null, and omitting the value entirely gives the default.
  User copyWith({String? username = this.username, String? email = this.email}) => User(
    username: username, 
    email: email,
  );
}

void main() {
  // create a reference user
  final alice = User(username: "alice", email: "alice@gmail.com");

  // regular copyWith material, nothing novel here
  final bob = alice.copyWith(username: "bob", email: "bob@gmail.com");

  // we're able to remove the email by explicitly passing null
  final aliceUnverified = alice.copyWith(email: null); 

  // we're able to choose whether to keep the email or not 
  bool isVerified = getAuthStatus();
  final aliceSynced = alice.copyWith(email: isVerified ? default : null);
}

[lrhn]

The problem of default values comes when all type-valid arguments are also valid and reasonable values, so there is no value left over to be the sentinel default value.

An approach to that could be to allow parameters to have types different from the local variable they introduce. Example:

void foo(int x as num) { ... }

would declare a void Function(int) function with a local variable of type num (always intiially assigned an int, possibly even promoted to int). The default value would then only need to be assignable to the local variable, so you could do:

void foo(int? x as num? = double.nan) { ... }

and accept any int or null, and still detect that no parameter was passed. (The feature is also useful in the other direction: void bar(Object? x as int) { ... } which will throw at run-time if the argument isn't actually an int, like we do for covariant instance method parameters).

(I still want to move to a parameter passing strategy where you cannot distinguish passing null from not passing an argument, and then there will be no way to write a with that accepts overriding with null.)

[Levi-Lesches]

(I still want to move to a parameter passing strategy where you cannot distinguish passing null from not passing an argument, and then there will be no way to write a with that accepts overriding with null.)

Can you elaborate on this? How then will the copyWith problem, where the difference between not passing an argument and passing in null is crucial, be solved?

[lrhn]

(It won't be solved if you can't distinguish passing null from passing nothing. It'll be impossible. That's something I'm personally willing to sacrifice for a much nice parameter passing protocol, one where you can always forward parameters to another function without knowing its default values, because you can always pass null to mean "no argument". I think that's a bigger problem than copyWith . But that's a separate problem, and different from the with proposal, which could behave differently than a function call.)

[jakemac53]

1. Determine the static type T of the left-hand receiver expression.

I am concerned about this being based on the static type. I may have a function that wants to change the name of a Person, and if somebody passes me a Manager I don't want to end up converting that to a Person and dropping all the extra information contained in Manager. The macro/codegen approaches all avoid this problem by just creating copyWith methods specialized to each class (the subclasses are only adding non-optional params).

2. Else, if T defines a getter with the same name, invoke the getter on r and pass the result to that parameter. It is a compile-time error if the type of the getter is not assignable to the parameter's type.

I also share the general concern @tatumizer was I think trying to express about this part. In Dart constructor parameters don't have a 1:1 relationship with fields. For lots of classes these with expressions will just be totally useless (or even dangerous because they will not do what is expected).

I would somehow want this feature to be restricted to classes that meet the definition of a "data class" - basically classes where every field is initialized with an initializing formal in the unnamed constructor, and there are no additional parameters.

[jakemac53]

As a more meta comment, I think I would rather see us solve this problem by solving the more general problem around null versus undefined (in particular for parameters). I don't think we want to go the route of adding undefined as an actual value, but some other solution to the problem might exist?

[jodinathan]

@jakemac53 instead of undefined, what about the default keyword in https://github.com/dart-lang/language/issues/577?

[jodinathan]

I find the foo(x: if (cond) 42) idea less hacky and more consistent (rhymes with "if" in collections). Though these two things are not equivalent in general, in the context of "with" they are.

This is interesting, however, it seems that omitting a parameter is something that the compiler can do at compile time. For this to work the default value of a parameter must be known at runtime because you may need it or not depending on the condition result.

I like the default keyword and foo(x: if (cond) 42) being a syntax sugar for its use, ie:

foo(if (cond) x: 42);

// desugars to

foo(x: cond ? 42 : default);

// then you can easily use it with multiple parameters
foo(if (cond) x: 42, if (otherCond) y: 123);

// desugars to 
foo(x: cond ? 42 : default, y: otherCond ? 123 : default);

The point is that the default keyword is important for you to state to the compiler that you need to know the default value of the parameter.

[jakemac53]

@jakemac53 instead of undefined, what about the default keyword in #577?

I don't think that solves the copyWith use case, unfortunately. Or at least it isn't clear to me how.

[stereotype441]

The desugaring does not rely on any properties of the class that are not already part of its static API, so using with() on a class you don't control does not affect how the class's API can be evolved over time.

I can't decide if I'm nit-picking here, but I don't think this reasoning is correct. Consider this (admittedly bizarre) API evolution:

Before:

class C {
  int x;
  C({this.x});
}

After:

class C {
  int x;
  int? y;
  C({this.x, String? y}) : y = y == null ? null : int.parse(y);
}

If no callers use with, this is a non-breaking change*, because any calls to C's constructor that worked before the change will also work after it. But if there's a call site that does this:

f(C c) => c.with(x: 0);

then that suddenly becomes a compile error because int? is not assignable to String?

I realize that this is a totally bizarre example, so maybe we don't care. I just wanted to raise awareness of it.

*Okay, actually I lied here. Technically, any change to a constructor signature is a breaking change because of constructor tearoffs. So maybe my whole argument is moot? I dunno.

[stereotype441]

I spent a while thinking about whether I could have used this feature in the implementation of flow analysis. It uses a lot of immutable data structures and updates them in a very "with"-like way, so it seems like a good candidate. For example, check out this code from the VariableModel class:

class VariableModel<Variable extends Object, Type extends Object> {
  final List<Type>? promotedTypes;
  final List<Type> tested;
  final bool assigned;
  final bool unassigned;
  final SsaNode<Variable, Type>? ssaNode;
  final NonPromotionHistory<Type>? nonPromotionHistory;
  final Map<String, VariableModel<Variable, Type>> properties;

  VariableModel(
      {required this.promotedTypes,
      required this.tested,
      required this.assigned,
      required this.unassigned,
      required this.ssaNode,
      this.nonPromotionHistory,
      this.properties = const {}}) { ... }

  VariableModel<Variable, Type> write(...) {
    ...
    return new VariableModel<Variable, Type>( // (1)
        promotedTypes: promotedTypes,
        tested: tested,
        assigned: assigned,
        unassigned: unassigned,
        ssaNode: newSsaNode);
    ...
  }
  ...
}

This proposal would let me replace the statement at (1) with:

    return this.with(
        ssaNode: newSsaNode,
        nonPromotionHistory: null,
        properties: const {});

Which is actually a lot better than what it looked like before. Note that not only did the use of with allow me to drop the promotedTypes, tested, assigned, and unassigned arguments, but it also forced me to explicitly state that I want to set nonPromotionHistory to null and properties to const {}. It's that last part that gets me really excited, because previously, the fact that those two fields were changing was really non-obvious, and now it's totally clear.

[Levi-Lesches]

@tatumizer:

WIth "with", default value is supposed to be copied over from the old instance. In a constructor call, "default" would mean a constant value defined in the initializer.

To distinguish between "omitted value" and "copying over from the old instance", simply set the default in the signature to this.X, so that omitting a value defaults to the instance's current value (depends on the ability to set non-const default parameter values).

@jakemac53:

I don't think that solves the copyWith use case, unfortunately. Or at least it isn't clear to me how.

From my comment above, combining default with non-const default parameters does solve this isssue. See my example there how to implement a User.copyWith.

[jakemac53]

From my comment above, combining deafult with non-const default parameters does solve this isssue. See my example there how to implement a User.copyWith.

True, it would. I don't know what the reasons are for making default values be const so I have no idea as to the feasibility of that part.

[munificent]

I don't know what the reasons are for making default values be const

There are two main things we get from it, that I know of:

1. It sidesteps tricky questions about when and how often the default value expression gets evaluated. Since it's const and thus can't have side effects or be mutated, it doesn't really matter. This avoids a particularly nasty pitfall in Python where the default value object is mutable but only gets evaluated once at function declaration time. (Or course, the easy answer is to just... not do that. If we supported non-const default values, we'd probably evaluate them once per invocation.)

2. It makes it possible to statically check that an overridden method doesn't change the default value. The language gives you a warning about this since it's really confusing as to what default value you actually get in this situation. We can do the check statically since both default values are const objects known at compile time.

However, non-const default values would be really useful, so I'd be happy to sacrifice those get them.

[ltOgt]

It won't be solved if you can't distinguish passing null from passing nothing

What about reusing void instead of exposing default?

class Name {
  final String first;
  final String? last;

  Name(this.first, this.last);
  Name with({String first, String? last}) => Name(
    (first == void) ? this.first : first,
    (last == void)  ? this.last  : last
  );
}

main() {
  var elvis   = Name("Elvis", "Costello");  // Elivs Costello
  var theKing = elvis.with(last: null)      // Elvis null
  var evlis2  = elvis.with()                // Elvis Costello
  var evlis3  = elvis.with(last: void)      // Elvis Costello
}

And required void treated the same as not passing anything:

class Foo {
  int? x;
  Foo({required this.x});
}
main() {
  Foo(x: 1);    // OK
  Foo(x: null); // OK
  Foo();     // Error
  Foo(x: void); // Error
}

Could also be the basis for conditional arguments:

Baz(p: if(condition) value);
Baz(p: condition ? value : void);

Not sure how hard/impossible a migration for this would be.

[ltOgt]

I see now that this would also clash with default values, so never mind...

[jakemac53]

2. It makes it possible to statically check that an overridden method doesn't change the default value. The language gives you a warning about this since it's really confusing as to what default value you actually get in this situation. We can do the check statically since both default values are const objects known at compile time.

This one we could also avoid with a different feature that allows you to not have to copy the actual default value (and instead be able to refer to it with a default keyword or some other feature like that).

[chgibb]

Look for an unnamed constructor on that class. It is a compile-time error if T is not a class type with an unnamed constructor.

Could this proposal be extended to include classes that have an unnamed factory (including an unnamed redirecting factory)?

My usecase here would be as a heavy user of package:freezed. This proposal appears to obsolete (and improve upon) package:freezed's generated copyWith methods. Code using package:freezed is based on unnamed redirecting factories.

[munificent]

Look for an unnamed constructor on that class. It is a compile-time error if T is not a class type with an unnamed constructor.

Could this proposal be extended to include classes that have an unnamed factory (including an unnamed redirecting factory)?

Yes, this strawman is deliberately worded such that it encompasses both generative and factory constructors.

[samandmoore]

I would love to have this feature. I can understand questions about whether providing some sort of undefined or default keyword would be better, but I've only ever felt the need for that in trying to implement these copyWith methods.

Perhaps I'd find more use-cases for something like undefined if we could also spread maps into functions to populate their parameters. Or maybe in pattern matching contexts? I'm not sure. But I can say for sure that this feature would be very valuable to me today and it seems like it wouldn't preclude a future language feature for something like undefined.

In any case, I'm happy you're thinking about this and kicking around ideas! Here's to hoping something like this lands in a not so distant future version of the language 🤞🏻

[cedvdb]

I don't think we want to go the route of adding undefined as an actual value

I understand that it would have a lot of ramification but those are two different ideas, one has not been defined, the other is nothing. There is also the third idea of undeclared. One possibility would be to only allow to check if something is undefined. That is only allow this operation:

- if someParam is undefined
- if lateInitializationMember is undefined .. // but is declared
- someClass.someUndeclaredMember  = x  // still throws, is undeclared

There is a general hatred for this, maybe for good reasons, but it has its places.

In most cases I use a wrapper though when needing some kind of differenciation. like null == undefined, DataSet == data is set but the data itself could be null. It's just an happy accident that all cases where a copyWith methods is needed does not require this and to be totally correct they would but that'd be asinine

[lrhn]

The "check if potentially unassigned variable is assigned or not" operator can definitely work. It might be possible to extend it to parameters, treating optional non-nullable parameters with no default value as potentially unassigned, and allowing the check-if-undefined operation to promote them.

It's something I'm not particularly fond of, because it might remove optimization opportunities. Allowing you to check whether a late variable is initialized means that the initialization state becomes overt. Compilers need to make sure that it has the correct state any time it's checked.

Code like

late int x = 2;
if (something) {
  foo(x);
}
if (x is! undefined) { ... }

Here the compiler can't just eagerly initialize x to 2, because you are able to ask whether initialization has happened. Without that operation, the compiler could eagerly initialize the variable, and nobody can tell the difference. (Admittedly, the example is stupid code, unless you actually want the side channel information that the intializer was evaluated, and quite possibly, the compiler can be smart enough to recognize when you are not asking about the initialization state.)

I'm also worried that allowing you to detect that an argument was not passed, as different from passing the default value, will make parameter forwarding harder, unless we also have a way to provide no argument value in an argument position. Those features will have to go together, otherwise it's a "no" from me.