[erlang-patches] add compiler checked atoms

[Richard Carlsson]

Wow, time flies... has it been that long? Anyway, I found this old branch
and decided to rework it like Kenneth suggested. Here's the PR:
https://github.com/erlang/otp/pull/1265


        /Richard

2012-02-14 12:24 GMT+01:00 Kenneth Lundin <kenneth.lundin@REDACTED>:

> I think atoms introduced in both -type and -spec should be respected in
> this feature. If you want to
> guard yourself against a misspelled atom in one -spec you can use -type
> but you are not forced to.
>
> And if you introduce an atom in  a -spec and never use it in the code then
> you could maybe issue a warning for that too.
>
> /Kenneth
>
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 10:47 AM, Richard Carlsson <
> carlsson.richard@REDACTED> wrote:
>
>> On 02/14/2012 09:44 AM, Kenneth Lundin wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>> I don't think this is a good way to introduce declared atoms.
>>> We already have the -type and -spec notation for definition of
>>> types and function signatures which are then used by Dialyzer for type
>>> checking.
>>> I don't think we should introduce yet another notation that is not
>>> harmonized with -type and -spec.
>>> It is already possible to declare atoms in -type and -spec. Why not use
>>> this already present notation and add
>>> optional checking of atoms against declared atoms inside -type and -spec
>>> instead.
>>> With the suggested -atom declaration we will probably get the same atoms
>>> declared 2 times with different notations and I think that
>>> will clutter down the code with redundant information to an
>>> unacceptable degree.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, that is probably a better idea: that any atom occurring in a -type
>> and/or -spec declaration is implicitly said to be known, and others are
>> not. This would be an incentive for people to define types for things like
>> the set of messages to a server or the set of atoms allowed as flags to a
>> function (or error codes returned from a function).
>>
>> The question is, should atoms occurring in -spec declarations be taken as
>> implicit "exists"-declarations, or should it only be those in -type? If
>> it's only -type that counts, you could get checking of the atoms in -spec
>> declarations as well, so you don't spell an atom wrong in the spec for one
>> of 3 versions of a function and suddenly that atom is also implicitly
>> allowed. I think -type only is the right way.
>>
>> I'll see if I can change my patch to do this instead.
>>
>>   /Richard
>>
>
>
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