Swift 2: an easier way to extract values from Optionals by turning nils into thrown errors

Originator:radexpl
Number:rdar://21371831 Date Originated:13-Jun-2015 03:22 PM
Status:Open Resolved:
Product:Developer Tools Product Version:Xcode 7 beta 1 (7A120f)
Classification:Enhancement Reproducible:Always
 
Here’s a common scenario:
- you do some fallible operation (that might return nil). For example, you take an untyped JSON dictionary, take elements from it, cast types, etc.
- If it’s .Some, you want to continue with some further operations, or perhaps just return the value
- if it’s nil, you want to be more specific and throw an error to report what caused the issue.

Right now, this requires something like:

guard let x = … else { throw Error }

But it would often be more convenient to turn the nil into an error inline, just like you can coalesce nils into concrete values using ??.

Here’s a nice option:

let x = try something_that_can_be_nil ?! Error

Proof of concept: https://twitter.com/radexp/status/608755467377078274
An example: https://gist.github.com/rnapier/dbffbf54274a880a6ac7

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