From f8fb1016dc2b8a1d35ccb9da3b28584827c639af Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Alan Jeffrey <403333+asajeffrey@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2021 17:22:38 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] RFC: Unsealed table assignment creates an optional property
 (#73)

* Added rfcs/unsealed-table-assign-optional-property.md

Co-authored-by: Lily Brown <lily@lily.fyi>
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+# Unsealed table assignment creates an optional property
+
+In Luau, tables have a state, which can, among others, be "unsealed".
+An unsealed table is one that we are still constructing.  Currently
+assigning a table literal to an unsealed table does not introduce new
+properties, so it is a type error if they are read.
+We would like to change this so that assigning a table
+literal to an unsealed table creates an optional property.
+
+## Motivation
+
+In lua-apps, there is testing code which (simplified) looks like:
+
+```lua
+local t = { u = {} }
+t = { u = { p = 37 } }
+t = { u = { q = "hi" } }
+local x: number? = t.u.p
+local y: string? = t.u.q
+```
+
+Currently, this code doesn't typecheck, due to `p` and `q` being unknown properties of `t.u`.
+
+## Design
+
+In order to support this idiom, we propose that assigning a table
+to an unsealed table should add an optional property.
+
+For example, before this change the type of `t` is `{ u: {} }`,
+and after this change is `{ u: { p: number?, q: number? } }`.
+
+This is implemented by adding a case to unification where the supertype
+is an unsealed table, and the subtype is a table with extra properties.
+Currently the extra properties are ignored, but with this change we would
+add the property to the unsealed table (making it optional if necessary).
+
+Since tables with optional properties of the same type are subtypes of
+tables with indexers, this allows table literals to be used as dictionaries,
+for example the type of `t` is a subtype of `{ u: { [string]: number } }`.
+
+Note that we need to add an optional property, otherwise the example above will not typecheck.
+```lua
+local t = { u = {} }
+t = { u = { p = 37 } }
+t = { u = { q = "hi" } } -- fails because there's no u.p
+```
+
+## Drawbacks
+
+The implementation of this proposal introduces optional types during unification,
+and so needs access to an allocator.
+
+## Alternatives
+
+Rather than introducing optional properties, we could introduce an indexer. For example we could infer the type of 
+`t` as `{ u: { [string]: number } }`.
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