Re: [Vala] Safe call operator

[Jim Nelson <jim yorba org>]

I was going to mention that as well.  Null handling in Java is not
analogous to Vala's strategy, if for no other reason than there's no NPE.

It looks to me the idea of a future Vala that emphasizes code correctness
is that it will catch things like this:

Xyxxy? x = get_xyzzy();
int result = x.foo();

The compiler will flag that last line as problematic.  I think it will, at
least.  I don't really know.  But it seems to me that if null-checking is
going to be enforced by the compiler, it's not too much to ask the language
to supply good tools for doing that checking.  The nullable operator is one
step in that direction, but I've coded many lines where I needed something
like the Elvis operator (and the associated operators suggested by Project
Coin).

I'll also point out that (according to the Project Coin page) the reason
the null-safety operators were turned down by the Java committee was that
the Checker framework was added to Java and that Groovy, the inspiration
for the proposed syntax, uses dynamic typing, which makes the operators
more flexible.  But the first is not going to happen for Vala (I've not
heard of any such framework) and the second could be made to argue against
the nullable operator, which was, in fact, added to Vala.

I think the Elvis operator (and its cousins) should get real consideration
and not be dismissed merely because Java didn't take them.

-- Jim



On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 7:27 AM, Artem Tarasov <lomereiter googlemail com>wrote:

> > As a starter, Java rejected that syntax.
>
> Yeah, but in Java at least a NullPointerException is thrown when null
> dereferencing occurs. In Vala the only option to provide null-safety
> is explicit checking for null after each method call in a chain.
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