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outcome

outcome

outcome -- result type for functions that may return an error

outcome is a choice type that represents the result of a routine that
may either produce something useful or fail producing an error condition.

Several error conditions are needed if there are several very different
reasons for an operation to fail, e.g.

get_data (u User, t Type) outcome data IO_Error Permission_Error is

read_file t Type outcome data IO_Error is

Note that 'outcome data IO_Error' is not assignment compatible with
'outcome data IO_Error Permission_Error', it has to be unwrapped first.
This unwrapping, however, requires very little boilerplate, it is done
using the '?' on the result of the call to 'read_file': This unwraps
'outcome data IO_Error' into 'IO_Error', which would be returned abruptly,
and 'data', which would be returned normally. Both are assignment
compatible to 'outcome data IO_Error Permission_Error', so everything
is fine.

Functions

returns o if outcome is ok, otherwise return the outcome's own
error.
convert this outcome to an option
if the outcome is an error, the option is empty
converts outcome to a string

returns the result of T.as_string for a successful outcome, or
"--$e--" for e error.

redefines:

monadic operator

This enables a very idiomatic way of error handling: assume you are trying
to read 42 bytes from a file into a string. Let open be a feature that takes
a file name and returns an outcome of some abstract file descriptor, let read
be a feature that takes an abstract file descriptor and a number of bytes to
read and returns an outcome of a byte (u8) array. We want to read 42 bytes
from a file called "example.txt" into a string, and we wrap this into an outcome,
for handling the case that an error occurs when opening the file (i.e. it does
not exist) or when reading the file (i.e. example.txt is not actually a file but
a directory). Using match expressions, this is very cumbersome:


The monadic operator turns this into:

§
:
Any
 => 
Type 
[Inherited from  Any]
Get the dynamic type of this instance. For value instances `x`, this is
equal to `type_of x`, but for `x` with a `ref` type `x.dynamic_type` gives
the actual runtime type, while `type_of x` results in the static
compile-time type.

There is no dynamic type of a type instance since this would result in an
endless hierachy of types. So for Type values, dynamic_type is redefined
to just return Type.type.
error of an outcome that is known to contain an error

This can only be called in cases where it is known for sure that this
outcome is an error. A runtime error will be created otherwise.
monadic operator

redefines:

§(B 
type
, MB 
type
, f Unary (monad.infix >>=~.MB) monad.A)
:
Any
 => 
monad.infix >>=~.MB 
[Inherited from  monad]
monadic operator to another monad

Apply f to elements of type A and wrap them in MB.

NYI: This is currently useless since a redefinition is not
allowed for features with generic arguments. Is there a way
we could allow this anyway?
Does this outcome contain an error
§(MMA 
type
:monad monad.MA (monad monad.A monad.MA), a monad.join.MMA)
:
Any
 => 
monad.MA 
[Inherited from  monad]
join operator

NYI: useless since redefinition currently not supported for
feature with generics.
§
:
Any
 => 
String 
[Inherited from  Type]
name of this type, including type parameters, e.g. 'option (list i32)'.
Does this outcome contain a value of type T?
returns o if outcome is not ok, otherwise return this outcome's value.
short-hand postfix operator for 'is_error'
short-hand postfix operator for 'ok'
short-hand prefix operator for 'is_error'
§
:
Any
 => 
String 
[Inherited from  Any]
convenience prefix operator to create a string from a value.

This permits usage of `$` as a prefix operator in a similar way both
inside and outside of constant strings: $x and "$x" will produce the
same string.
§
:
Any
 => 
outcome.T
unwrap this outcome

redefines:

§
:
Any
 => 
outcome.T
value of an outcome that is known to contain a value

This can only be called in cases where it is known for sure that this
outcomee is not an error. A runtime error will be created otherwise.
§(default outcome.T)
:
Any
 => 
outcome.T
value of an outcome or default if outcome contains err

Type Features

§(a outcome.type.T)
:
Any
 is
return function

redefines:

§
:
Any
 is
 
[Inherited from  Any]
Get a type as a value.

This is a feature with the effect equivalent to Fuzion's `expr.type` call tail.
It is recommended to use `expr.type` and not `expr.type_value`.

`type_value` is here to show how this can be implemented and to illustrate the
difference to `dynamic_type`.