> as name of the type, I think I like void more than ()
It's the wrong name though. In type theory, (), the type with one member, is traditionally called "Unit", while "Void" is the uninhabited type. Void is the return type of e.g. abort.
It's the wrong name though. In type theory, (), the type with one member, is traditionally called "Unit", while "Void" is the uninhabited type. Void is the return type of e.g. abort.
A ton of people coming to Zig are going to be coming from C and C++. void is fine.
Cool trick: some languages (e.g. TypeScript) allow `void` generics making parameters of that type optional.
This means that a function that returns an uninhabited type is statically known to not return -- since there's no way it could construct an uninhabited value for a return expression. It also means you can coerce a value of uninhabited type into any other type, because any code which recieves a value of an uninhabited type must be unreachable.
For instance, in Rust you can write the following:
let weekday_name: &str = match weekday_number {
1 => "Sunday",
2 => "Monday",
3 => "Tuesday",
4 => "Wednesday",
5 => "Thursday",
6 => "Friday",
7 => "Saturday",
i => panic!("invalid weekday number: {i});
};
> The mode VOID has a single value denoted by EMPTY.