Parameters with multiple types

[recvfrom]

What problem are you trying to solve?

It'd be helpful if the infra spec section on algorithm parameters mentioned how to have a parameter have two types (for instance, a type or failure, or a type and string). It seems like this is somewhat common

What solutions exist today?

It's possible to pass in two optional parameters and have the caller only set one of them, although it's less immediately clear that the two are mutually exclusive.

How would you solve it?

No response

Anything else?

No response

[annevk]

Makes sense. Quick example in case you're actually stuck:

To post a result given a result or failure result:

("a result or failure" would be the type here and "result" in that type would link to "result"'s definition)

[recvfrom]

Makes sense. Quick example in case you're actually stuck:

To post a result given a result or failure result:

("a result or failure" would be the type here and "result" in that type would link to "result"'s definition)

Thank you! That makes sense. The other piece that would be helpful to document is what language to use to conditionally handle the different types passed. I guess for "<type> or failure" you could just do "if parameter is not failure", but if a parameter could be two types it's not clear to me how to distinguish the two cases (although I'm not currently stuck on this, so no need to reply urgently 😄 )

[annevk]

Usually we use "is" to do instance checks:

If a is a Blob object, then release the Kraken.