🔍 Search Terms

as, satisfies, type assertion, type casting

✅ Viability Checklist

• This wouldn't be a breaking change in existing TypeScript/JavaScript code
• This wouldn't change the runtime behavior of existing JavaScript code
• This could be implemented without emitting different JS based on the types of the expressions
• This isn't a runtime feature (e.g. library functionality, non-ECMAScript syntax with JavaScript output, new syntax sugar for JS, etc.)
• This feature would agree with the rest of our Design Goals: https://github.com/Microsoft/TypeScript/wiki/TypeScript-Design-Goals

⭐ Suggestion

I suggest adding a safe type assertion operator, a kind of middle ground between current as and satisfies.

• Like as, it should cast the expression to the asserted type
• Like satisfies, it should only allow assertion if the asserted type is wider than the expression type

Here's what it might look like:

type Foo = { a: number }

const foo1 = { a: 1 } as! Foo // OK. foo1: Foo

const foo2 = { a: 1, b: 2 } as! Foo // OK, foo2: Foo

const foo3 = { b: 2 } as! Foo // Error, { b: number } is not assignable to Foo

const foo4 = { } as! Foo // Error, {} is not assignable to Foo

📃 Motivating Example

For example, such operator will allow to safely give named types to expressions without declaring extra variables or helper functions.

Consider an async function f that returns an object of type Foo:

type Foo = { a: number }

const f = async () => ({ a: 1 })

I want the returned object to strictly be of Foo type, how do I enforce this?

1. Hard code the return type

const f = async (): Promise<Foo> => ({ a: 1 })

The problem here is that I must write Promise<Foo> instead of just Foo, but the Promise part can be inferred just fine. In real world these generics can be arbitrarily complex.

2. Declare a variable

const f = async () => {
  const result: Foo = { a: 1 }

  return result
}

This is better than retyping generics but still pretty verbose.

3. Use a helper function

const safeAssert = <T>(value: T): T => value

const f = async () => safeAssert<Foo>({ a: 1 })

This is ok but still requires writing/importing helper functions.

as is not an option here because it's unsafe, satisfies is neither because it doesn't name the type. Naming a type can be important for documentation purposes, this proposal allows to do this with less boilerplate.

const f = async () => ({ a: 1}) as! Foo // f: () => Promise<Foo>

💻 Use Cases

As described above, this feature can be used to safely cast expressions to specified types. A practical example when it can be useful is naming a type in an expression. Currently this is only covered by custom helper functions such as <T>(value: T): T => value.