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Better conversion from collection expression element

Note

This article is a feature specification. The specification serves as the design document for the feature. It includes proposed specification changes, along with information needed during the design and development of the feature. These articles are published until the proposed spec changes are finalized and incorporated in the current ECMA specification.

There may be some discrepancies between the feature specification and the completed implementation. Those differences are captured in the pertinent language design meeting (LDM) notes.

You can learn more about the process for adopting feature speclets into the C# language standard in the article on the specifications.

Champion issue: https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang/issues/8374

Summary

Updates to the better conversion rules to be more consistent with params, and better handle current ambiguity scenarios. For example, ReadOnlySpan<string> vs ReadOnlySpan<object> can currently cause ambiguities during overload resolution for [""].

Detailed Design

The following are the better conversion from expression rules. These replace the rules in https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang/blob/main/proposals/csharp-12.0/collection-expressions.md#overload-resolution.

These rules are:

Given an implicit conversion C₁ that converts from an expression E to a type T₁, and an implicit conversion C₂ that converts from an expression E to a type T₂, C₁ is a better conversion than C₂ if one of the following holds:

  • E is a collection expression, and C₁ is a better collection conversion from expression than C₂
  • E is not a collection expression and one of the following holds:
    • E exactly matches T₁ and E does not exactly match T₂
    • E exactly matches both or neither of T₁ and T₂, and T₁ is a better conversion target than T₂
  • E is a method group, ...

We add a new definition for better collection conversion from expression, as follows:

Given:

  • E is a collection expression with element expressions [EL₁, EL₂, ..., ELₙ]
  • T₁ and T₂ are collection types
  • E₁ is the element type of T₁
  • E₂ is the element type of T₂
  • CE₁ᵢ are the series of conversions from ELᵢ to E₁
  • CE₂ᵢ are the series of conversions from ELᵢ to E₂

If there is an identity conversion from E₁ to E₂, then the element conversions are as good as each other. Otherwise, the element conversions to E₁ are better than the element conversions to E₂ if:

  • For every ELᵢ, CE₁ᵢ is at least as good as CE₂ᵢ, and
  • There is at least one i where CE₁ᵢ is better than CE₂ᵢ Otherwise, neither set of element conversions is better than the other, and they are also not as good as each other.
    Conversion comparisons are made using better conversion from expression if ELᵢ is not a spread element. If ELᵢ is a spread element, we use better conversion from the element type of the spread collection to E₁ or E₂, respectively.

C₁ is a better collection conversion from expression than C₂ if:

  • Both T₁ and T₂ are not span types, and T₁ is implicitly convertible to T₂, and T₂ is not implicitly convertible to T₁, or
  • E₁ does not have an identity conversion to E₂, and the element conversions to E₁ are better than the element conversions to E₂, or
  • E₁ has an identity conversion to E₂, and one of the following holds:
    • T₁ is System.ReadOnlySpan<E₁>, and T₂ is System.Span<E₂>, or
    • T₁ is System.ReadOnlySpan<E₁> or System.Span<E₁>, and T₂ is an array_or_array_interface with element type E₂

Otherwise, neither collection type is better, and the result is ambiguous.

Note

These rules mean that methods that expose overloads that take different element types and without a conversion between the collection types are ambiguous for empty collection expressions. As an example:

public void M(ReadOnlySpan<int> ros) { ... }
public void M(Span<int?> span) { ... }

M([]); // Ambiguous

Scenarios:

In plain English, the collection types themselves must be either the same, or unambiguously better (ie, List<T> and List<T> are the same, List<T> is unambiguously better than IEnumerable<T>, and List<T> and HashSet<T> cannot be compared), and the element conversions for the better collection type must also be the same or better (ie, we can't decide between ReadOnlySpan<object> and Span<string> for [""], the user needs to make that decision). More examples of this are:

T₁ T₂ E C₁ Conversions C₂ Conversions CE₁ᵢ vs CE₂ᵢ Outcome
List<int> List<byte> [1, 2, 3] [Identity, Identity, Identity] [Implicit Constant, Implicit Constant, Implicit Constant] CE₁ᵢ is better List<int> is picked
List<int> List<byte> [(int)1, (byte)2] [Identity, Implicit Numeric] Not applicable T₂ is not applicable List<int> is picked
List<int> List<byte> [1, (byte)2] [Identity, Implicit Numeric] [Implicit Constant, Identity] Neither is better Ambiguous
List<int> List<byte> [(byte)1, (byte)2] [Implicit Numeric, Implicit Numeric] [Identity, Identity] CE₂ᵢ is better List<byte> is picked
List<int?> List<long> [1, 2, 3] [Implicit Nullable, Implicit Nullable, Implicit Nullable] [Implicit Numeric, Implicit Numeric, Implicit Numeric] Neither is better Ambiguous
List<int?> List<ulong> [1, 2, 3] [Implicit Nullable, Implicit Nullable, Implicit Nullable] [Implicit Numeric, Implicit Numeric, Implicit Numeric] CE₁ᵢ is better List<int?> is picked
List<short> List<long> [1, 2, 3] [Implicit Numeric, Implicit Numeric, Implicit Numeric] [Implicit Numeric, Implicit Numeric, Implicit Numeric] CE₁ᵢ is better List<short> is picked
IEnumerable<int> List<byte> [1, 2, 3] [Identity, Identity, Identity] [Implicit Constant, Implicit Constant, Implicit Constant] CE₁ᵢ is better IEnumerable<int> is picked
IEnumerable<int> List<byte> [(byte)1, (byte)2] [Implicit Numeric, Implicit Numeric] [Identity, Identity] CE₂ᵢ is better List<byte> is picked
int[] List<byte> [1, 2, 3] [Identity, Identity, Identity] [Implicit Constant, Implicit Constant, Implicit Constant] CE₁ᵢ is better int[] is picked
ReadOnlySpan<string> ReadOnlySpan<object> ["", "", ""] [Identity, Identity, Identity] [Implicit Reference, Implicit Reference, Implicit Reference] CE₁ᵢ is better ReadOnlySpan<string> is picked
ReadOnlySpan<string> ReadOnlySpan<object> ["", new object()] Not applicable [Implicit Reference, Identity] T₁ is not applicable ReadOnlySpan<object> is picked
ReadOnlySpan<object> Span<string> ["", ""] [Implicit Reference] [Identity] CE₂ᵢ is better Span<string> is picked
ReadOnlySpan<object> Span<string> [new object()] [Identity] Not applicable T₁ is not applicable ReadOnlySpan<object> is picked
ReadOnlySpan<InterpolatedStringHandler> ReadOnlySpan<string> [$"{1}"] [Interpolated String Handler] [Identity] CE₁ᵢ is better ReadOnlySpan<InterpolatedStringHandler> is picked
ReadOnlySpan<InterpolatedStringHandler> ReadOnlySpan<string> [$"{"blah"}"] [Interpolated String Handler] [Identity] - But constant CE₂ᵢ is better ReadOnlySpan<string> is picked
ReadOnlySpan<string> ReadOnlySpan<FormattableString> [$"{1}"] [Identity] [Interpolated String] CE₂ᵢ is better ReadOnlySpan<string> is picked
ReadOnlySpan<string> ReadOnlySpan<FormattableString> [$"{1}", (FormattableString)null] Not applicable [Interpolated String, Identity] T₁ isn't applicable ReadOnlySpan<FormattableString> is picked
HashSet<short> Span<long> [1, 2] [Implicit Constant, Implicit Constant] [Implicit Numeric, Implicit Numeric] CE₁ᵢ is better HashSet<short> is picked
HashSet<long> Span<short> [1, 2] [Implicit Numeric, Implicit Numeric] [Implicit Constant, Implicit Constant] CE₂ᵢ is better Span<short> is picked

Open questions

How far should we prioritize ReadOnlySpan/Span over other types?

As specified today, the following overloads would be ambiguous:

C.M1(["Hello world"]); // Ambiguous, no tiebreak between ROS and List
C.M2(["Hello world"]); // Ambiguous, no tiebreak between Span and List

C.M3(["Hello world"]); // Ambiguous, no tiebreak between ROS and MyList.

C.M4(["Hello", "Hello"]); // Ambiguous, no tiebreak between ROS and HashSet. Created collections have different contents

class C
{
    public static void M1(ReadOnlySpan<string> ros) {}
    public static void M1(List<string> list) {}

    public static void M2(Span<string> ros) {}
    public static void M2(List<string> list) {}

    public static void M3(ReadOnlySpan<string> ros) {}
    public static void M3(MyList<string> list) {}

    public static void M4(ReadOnlySpan<string> ros) {}
    public static void M4(HashSet<string> hashset) {}
}

class MyList<T> : List<T> {}

How far do we want to go here? The List<T> variant seems reasonable, and subtypes of List<T> exist aplenty. But the HashSet version has very different semantics, how sure are we that it's actually "worse" than ReadOnlySpan in this API?