DIP 1034--Add a Bottom Type (reboot)--Formal Assessment Begins

[Dennis]

On Wednesday, 3 February 2021 at 18:24:06 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
> Is there a short explanation of why this was done and what it 
> enables?

It is done to give better semantics to certain things that 
currently have special cases in the compiler. E.g. the compiler 
has an internal list of functions that don't return, and 
`typeof(null)` is a bit of a special case.

This enables:

- Writing your own 'panic' function that the compiler knows 
terminates control flow (similar to assert(0)) so you don't have 
to write an unreachable `return` or `break`.
- Throwing exceptions in lambda's: `() => throw new Exception("")`
- Accepting `null` in a template taking a generic pointer `T*`
- Recognizing the empty list `[]` in template functions 
(currently it is a `void[]`)