hide specific apis?

[michaellilltokiwa]

An example:

  # create string from the given utf8 bytes
  #
  public type.from_bytes(utf8_bytes Sequence u8) String =>
    ref : String is
      public redef utf8 Sequence u8 := utf8_bytes.as_array_backed


  # create string from the given codepoints
  #
  public type.from_codepoints(codepoints Sequence codepoint) String =>
    String.from_bytes (codepoints.flat_map (.utf8))


  # create string from the given data
  #
  # where data might either be utf8 bytes or codepoints
  #
  public type.from(data choice (Sequence u8) (Sequence codepoint)) String =>
    match data
      bytes Sequence u8 => String.from_bytes bytes
      codepoints Sequence codepoint => String.from_codepoints codepoints

Here we could set visibility of from_codepoints, from_bytes to private, exposing only from. Upside would be that the API surface is smaller and thus possible easier to grasp. Your opinions on cases like this?

[fridis]

I think this would make sense, maybe we could even delete those APIs.

Somewhat related: It might make sense to use | syntax sugar to improve readability here, maybe like this (hope this works, I think it should ...:-)

  public type.from(data Sequence u8
                      | Sequence codepoint
                  ) String
  =>

[maxteufel]

I don't think we should delete the private APIs, this keeps the implementation of the "unified" from feature clean.