Proposal for interfaces

Note: The current implementation, which has syntactically drifted a bit from the proposal, is described in Note interfaces.

Discussion here, issue number #1227

Method implementation

// This implements an interface `iter_util` for vector types
impl iter_util<T> : [T] {
    fn len() -> uint { std::vec::len(self) }
    fn iter(f: block(T)) { for elt in self { f(elt); } }
    fn iter_n(f: block(T, uint)) {
        let i = 0u;
        for elt in self { f(elt, i); i += 1u; }
    }
}

Static resolution

If that was defined in std::vec, another module can import the interface implementation and use it for method calls:

import std::vec::iter_util;
[1, 2, 3].iter {|e| log_err e;}

This call is statically resolved. The set of imported interface implementations is searched for an iter method matching the type of the method call's receiver ([int]). If more than one match, the 'nearest' import wins. If there are still multiple implementatoins in the nearest scope, we'll want to somehow score them for specificity, and give precedence to more specific implementations. This will be implemented later.

Declared interfaces

iface seq<T> {
    fn len() -> uint;
    fn iter(block(T));
}

The above declares a named interface type seq. You can make implementations refer to a specific interface by using its name.

impl std::seq::seq<T> : std::list::list {
    fn len() -> uint { std::list::len(self) }
    fn iter(f: block(T)) { std::list::iter(self, f); }
}

• Maybe the two portions of the impl should be flipped. When we use interfaces and we say fn blah(x:interface) meaning "x has an implementation of interface", we put the interface after the colon in the type position. The same thing would make sense here. The order of definition should probably match the order of use. - Dylan

This will recycle the name of the interface for the name of the implementation, so if you define this in std::list, std::list::seq will refer to this implementation. The compiler will verify that an implementation of an existing interface actually conforms to the interface declaration.

We may want to allow optionally specifying a different name. I'm currently thinking that, if we allow implementations to share names as long as they are specializing on different types, it will rarely be a problem to default to the interface name.

Dynamic dispatch through bounded type params

If seq names an interface that has been imported, it can be used as a bound on a type parameter, allowing methods in that interface to be used inside the generic function.

// Declare T to be an instance of the seq interface
fn total_len<T:seq>(seqs: [T]) -> uint {
    let cnt = 0u;
    for s in seqs { count += s.len(); }
    count
}

You can also specify multiple bounds (<T:seq, to_str>). What actually happens here is that vtables for the interface are passed as hidden parameters to the generic (much like type descriptors currently are). The call site knows the type of the argument, and can generate the right vtable pointer. When generics call each other, the vtables can be threaded through (again, in exactly the same way as tydescs).

An implementation that did not refer to an explicitly declared interface can still participate in dynamic dispatch. If it has been imported, and its signature matches (or is a superset of) the named interface, it will be considered an implementation of that interface.

Maybe we also want to allow interface implementations to be patched together out of multiple imported interfaces. I (Marijn) feel this is a bit too automatic, but I believe Niko would prefer that to be supported. We'll have to further discuss, or see in practice.

Kinds as bounded type parameters

The copy and send kinds could be annotated just like other parameter bounds, removing a special case from our syntax. They behave very much like interfaces, except that they are not implemented by the user, but automatically derived by the compiler. We may want to look into automatic derivations for other interfaces (to_str, compare) as well in the future.

Per-value vtables

The above does not help when you want to have a collection of generic values, each with its own vtable. For this, we can support explicit casting to vtable-wrapped types.

circle(10f, "red") as drawable

Where drawable is an interface. This would copy value and the drawable vtable for its type into a reference counted box. You could then stuff a number of those into a collection, and call their .draw() methods through the boxed vtable.

fn draw_all(ds: [drawable]) { for d in ds { d.draw(); } }

Extensions

The below has not been properly worked out or discussed yet, but will undoubtedly come up.

Qualified implementations

iface hash { fn hash() -> uint }

impl<T:hash> hash : [T] {
    fn hash() -> uint {
        let h = 0u;
        for elt in self { h += elt.hash(); }
        h
    }
}

Not sure about that syntax, but what it is saying is 'if T has an implementation of hash, then this is an implementation of hash for [T]'. When creating the vtable for [T], the vtable for T must first be looked up (in local scope), and then stored in the vtable for [T] somehow, so that it can be fed to the hash method.

Self type

Many interface specifications have to refer to the type of their self somehow. For example:

iface send_to_mom { fn send(chan<self>) }

'Self types' are apparently a difficult problem in type theory. I'm don't have the background to say much about them, but I get the impression that this kind of interface system sidesteps a lot of their issues.

I don't think self types are a good idea, since we're not really talking about objects, and its somewhat unclear. Should self refer to the iface, or to the type being implemented? At least due to the first example on this page, this makes no sense to me. A self locally bound to the (existential) type of the interface itself would make sense. - Dylan

I advocate for both. An existential iface.type of self will be useful in the presence of interface inheritance (e.g. return value has same interface as called value). An existential impl.type of the implementation type of self is useful for declaring interfaces for cloning, reconciliation of object versions etc. However it may be required that it gets "upgraded" automatically to the corresponding iface.type whenever the implementation type is not known to the caller (i.e. when using type parameters or the real type behaves like the implementation type, when using polymorphism behaves like the interface type) - boggle

Non-method-syntax methods

The dot-syntax is great for operations that obviously hang off a single value, but becomes awkward for binary or N-ary operations. For example a set union is traditionally done set1.union(set2) in OO languages. We could allow something like union.(set1, set2) to specify that union is to be looked up as a method.

However, this also requires implementations of union to spell out all their arguments, so there'd be some markup necessary in interface declarations to specify whether methods take an implicit self argument or not. Maybe by prefixing method names that expect implicit self arguments with a dot (fn .len() -> uint).

(This is for the future.)

Operator overloading

We could allow operator names to appear as function names in interfaces, and include interfaces cmp and num in the core library with suitable implementations for the built-in types.

iface num {
    fn +(self, self) -> self;
    fn -(self, self) -> self;
    /* etc */
}

You could then implement operators for non-primitive types by defining (and importing) a suitable implementation.

impl num : bignum {
    fn +(a: self, b: self) -> self { mp::add(a, b) }
    /* etc */
}

Delegation

Go has a feature called "anonymous fields" where a struct may include another struct as a field addressed by type name and by merit of that inherits all methods defined on that field. This is a practical approach to implement delegation. Perhaps there could be a similar feature as an extension of the type class proposal where an impl can elect to implement an iface by delegating calls to another impl by calling a pure function or dispatching to a member field. Syntax:

// via pure call
type t = ...;
impl iter_util<t> : t via pure_call(*); 

// via a record field
type t = { foo: iter_util, bar: int }
impl iter_util<t> : t via *.foo;

// via a tuple field
type tuple_t = (int, float, iter_util)
impl iter_util<T> : t via (_, _, *) 

Constants

Interfaces should cover constants as well, these will show up in any sensible, type class based number hierarchy. While consts could be implemented via pure nullary functions, this may be undesirable from a performance perspective. It would also hurt readability.