[Proposal]: Records with sealed base ToString override

[jnm2]

Records with sealed base ToString override

• Proposed
• Prototype: Done
• Implementation: Done
• Specification: Not Started

Summary

This proposal would lift the restriction on declaring sealed ToString overrides in non-sealed records and lift the restriction on a record inheriting from a base type that has a sealed ToString override. The semantics of sealed override are clear, they are appropriate for closed hierarchies where ToString is controlled by the base, and the current errors seem to deny its otherwise consistent functioning out of an overabundance of caution.

Motivation

There's currently no way to specify a ToString implementation once for all derived records. Because of this, the need to override ToString can have a jarring result. Consider this hand-rolled discriminated union based on records:

public abstract record SomeDiscriminatedUnion(string Name)
{
    public sealed record FirstKind(string Name, int A) : SomeDiscriminatedUnion(Name);
    public sealed record SecondKind(string Name, int B) : SomeDiscriminatedUnion(Name);
    public sealed record ThirdKind(string Name, bool C) : SomeDiscriminatedUnion(Name);
    public sealed record FourthKind(string Name) : SomeDiscriminatedUnion(Name);
}

Overriding ToString has no effect on derived records unless each derived record is given a manual override that returns base.ToString(). Sealing the override would perfectly describe the intended result, but this is currently blocked by the compiler with errors CS0239 and CS8870.

The simplest option currently available is much less pleasing. One factor is its repetition. Another factor is that the base record no longer contains a readable list of single-line members.

public abstract record SomeDiscriminatedUnion(string Name)
{
    public sealed record FirstKind(string Name, int A) : SomeDiscriminatedUnion(Name)
    {
        public override string ToString() => Name;
    }

    public sealed record SecondKind(string Name, int B) : SomeDiscriminatedUnion(Name)
    {
        public override string ToString() => Name;
    }

    public sealed record ThirdKind(string Name, bool C) : SomeDiscriminatedUnion(Name)
    {
        public override string ToString() => Name;
    }

    public sealed record FourthKind(string Name) : SomeDiscriminatedUnion(Name)
    {
        public override string ToString() => Name;
    }
}

Detailed design

Non-sealed records would support sealed overrides of ToString the same way classes do rather than producing error "CS8870 'BaseRecord.ToString()' cannot be sealed because containing record is not sealed."

Derived records would support inheriting when the base ToString is sealed by skipping the synthesized ToString override rather than producing error "CS0239 'DerivedRecord.ToString()': cannot override inherited member 'BaseRecord.ToString()' because it is sealed."

Drawbacks

Alternatives

A community source generator could be developed that would look for an attribute on the base record or the base record's ToString override and add public override string ToString() => base.ToString(); to each derived record that doesn't already declare a ToString member. This feels like a workaround at best. The semantics of sealed override are clear, they are appropriate for closed hierarchies where ToString is controlled by the base, and the current errors seem to deny its otherwise consistent functioning out of an overabundance of caution.

Unresolved questions

Design meetings

https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang/blob/main/meetings/2021/LDM-2021-02-10.md#sealed-record-ToString

[thomaslevesque]

I was about to open an issue for the the exact same problem, and discovered that you did it yesterday... Good timing!

Apparently this restriction was carefully specified:

It is an error if the explicit declaration does not match the expected signature or accessibility, or if the explicit declaration doesn't allow overriding it in a derived type and the record type is not sealed.

But in some scenarios, it's killing one of the biggest benefits of records: conciseness.

Until this is fixed, I'm working around the issue using source generators, but it's annoying, because writing source generators is time-consuming.

[thomaslevesque]

@333fred what's the status of this proposal? Has it been discussed in LDM yet? Is there any chance it could be included in C#10?

[333fred]

@333fred what's the status of this proposal? Has it been discussed in LDM yet? Is there any chance it could be included in C#10?

@thomaslevesque this proposal is in the Any Time milestone. What that means is that it is not a priority for the compiler team at the moment, but we'd accept a PR implementing the feature from the community.

[thomaslevesque]

@333fred thanks.
It seems like a relatively simple change, so I might give it a try. However I've never worked on the compiler before, so I don't know if I'd be able to implement this... Any pointers to get me started?

[jnm2]

@thomaslevesque https://aka.ms/dotnet-discord has a #roslyn contribution chat where @333fred and others are active. I'm really interested in seeing this happen for C# 10 too, and I might be able to be helpful with some of my memories from implementing the module initializers feature. It might be the case that a test already exists demonstrating that ToString can't be overridden which you can flip around. Once there's a test, then it's a matter of debugging the test and looking for likely places where logic should be modified. One tactic that sped me up was searching for all references of the enum member representing the CS error that was being reported so I could jump to the place in the code that was originating the error.

[jnm2]

Grabbing the error IDs from SharpLab, it looks like there will be two errors that will need to stop being emitted in this situation:

error CS8870: 'SomeDiscriminatedUnion.ToString()' cannot be sealed because containing record is not sealed.

error CS0239: 'SomeDiscriminatedUnion.FirstKind.ToString()': cannot override inherited member 'SomeDiscriminatedUnion.ToString()' because it is sealed

The Roslyn codebase (excluding tests) only has two references to the enum member representing CS8870, one clearly producing the diagnostic for ToString and the other clearly for GetHashCode: http://sourceroslyn.io/#Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.CSharp/Errors/ErrorCode.cs,7a7a4a52c24276bc,references

The other error will need to be fixed not by skipping emitting a diagnostic but by skipping emitting synthesized ToString overrides.

A test will probably be needed that shows that a ToString was actually generated as sealed in the base class.

Not sure how much help this is, but here's a PR demonstrating emit changes and emit tests: dotnet/roslyn#43281
Probably smarter to search for the PR that implemented records, or search for types that contain the words 'record' and 'synthesized' maybe.

[thomaslevesque]

@jnm2 thanks, that's helpful.
No promise (not much free time these days), but I'll try to take a look.

[thomaslevesque]

I'm wondering if this change should be applied just to ToString, or to GetHashCode as well.
Trying to seal the GetHashCode override produces CS8870, just like ToString. However, what bothers me is that we can override GetHashCode in a record (just not seal it), but we can't override Equals at all. This seems inconsistent, since Equals and GetHashCode must agree... Shouldn't it be illegal to override GetHashCode if we can't override Equals?

[jnm2]

Either way, why would that mean this change should also be applied to allow sealing of GetHashCode? What's the motivation?