Avoid method overwriting in julia1-compat branch

[kimikage]

StyledStrings v1.0 currently does method overwriting.

StyledStrings.jl/src/strings/overrides.jl

Lines 1 to 15 in db9f9b5

	## From basic.jl
	function (*)(s1::Union{AbstractChar, AbstractString}, ss::Union{AbstractChar, AbstractString}...)
	if _isannotated(s1) || any(_isannotated, ss)
	annotatedstring(s1, ss...)
	else
	string(s1, ss...)
	end
	end
	# From io.jl
	join(iterator) = _join_preserve_annotations(iterator)
	join(iterator, delim) = _join_preserve_annotations(iterator, delim)
	join(iterator, delim, last) = _join_preserve_annotations(iterator, delim, last)

At least for *, we should be able to avoid overwriting by defining the following (or something like):

function (*)(s1::Union{AnnotatedChar, AnnotatedString}, s2::Union{AbstractChar, AbstractString})
    annotatedstring(s1, s2)
end

function (*)(s1::Union{AbstractChar, AbstractString}, s2::Union{AnnotatedChar, AnnotatedString})
    annotatedstring(s1, s2)
end

function (*)(s1::Union{AnnotatedChar, AnnotatedString}, s2::Union{AnnotatedChar, AnnotatedString})
    annotatedstring(s1, s2)
end

function (*)(s1::Union{AbstractChar, AbstractString}, s2::Union{AbstractChar, AbstractString}, ss::Union{AbstractChar, AbstractString}...)
    if _isannotated(s1) || _isannotated(s2) || any(_isannotated, ss)
        annotatedstring(s1, s2, ss...)
    else
        string(s1, s2, ss...)
    end
end

Edit:
An alternative is to require that the first 2 or 3 arguments should contain Union{AnnotatedChar, AnnotatedString}.

[tecosaur]

Hmmm, that's an interesting suggestion. At a glance, that looks viable, but I don't think we can do something similar with join unfortunately.

[kimikage]

I think limited support would be more beneficial (i.e., less troublesome) than method overwriting.

[tecosaur]

Maybe, the goal I went into with this though was to make it behave as close to the 1.11 stdlib as possible, and it's extremely close. As far as I'm aware, the problem with method overwriting here is he latency impact, is there anything beyond that?

[kimikage]

Whether or not method overwriting is performed is a greater difference than missing annotations in some cases.
The downstream package can avoid the latter if necessary, but not control the overwriting in StyledStrings.

[tecosaur]

Right, but what's the negative impact of the method overwriting? AFAIU it's just the latency.

[kimikage]

This is a tautology, but it is a problem because method overwriting is a problem that is worthy of a warning.

Older julia in particular are somewhat fragile with precompilation.
I think other core developers are more knowledgeable about the specific issues. So it might be good to ask the opinions of the experts on Slack, Zulip, or Discourse.

Also, I think we need to clarify the relationship between this package and Compat.jl.

[kimikage]

In the first place, the join is buggy.
JuliaLang/julia#51914

any(_isannotated, args) # `any(_isannotated, iterator)` ?

julia> join(("a", styled"{bold:b}"), ", ")|>typeof
String

julia> join(["a", styled"{bold:b}"], ", ")|>typeof
Base.AnnotatedString{String}

julia> versioninfo()
Julia Version 1.12.0-DEV.469
Commit 0d1d4ba068 (2024-05-06 21:04 UTC)
Build Info:
  Official https://julialang.org/ release
Platform Info:
  OS: Windows (x86_64-w64-mingw32)
  CPU: 8 × 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1165G7 @ 2.80GHz
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  LLVM: libLLVM-17.0.6 (ORCJIT, tigerlake)
Threads: 1 default, 0 interactive, 1 GC (on 8 virtual cores)

[tecosaur]

Right, but the overwriting doesn't happen during precompilation. Chatting about method overwriting on Triage with Jeff, he said method overwriting is a fine thing to do.

Also, I think we need to clarify the relationship between this package and Compat.jl.

There is no relation, I can't say I see the need?

[tecosaur]

In the first place, the join is buggy.

Looks like that's worthy of an issue in JuliaLang/julia, either the join check will need to be tweaked or _isannotated needs another method.

[kimikage]

My point here (not in JuliaLang/julia) is that even with limited support for join, no major problems have arisen so far.

The following is just a PoC, but it works minimally.

join(iterator, delim::Union{AbstractString, AbstractChar}) = _join_preserve_annotations(iterator, delim)
join(iterator, delim::Union{AbstractString, AbstractChar}, last) = _join_preserve_annotations(iterator, delim, last)

Edit:
Or more conservatively:

join(iterator, delim::Union{AnnotatedChar, AnnotatedString}) = _join_preserve_annotations(iterator, delim)
join(iterator, delim::Union{AnnotatedChar, AnnotatedString}, last) = _join_preserve_annotations(iterator, delim, last)

[kimikage]

Also, I think we need to clarify the relationship between this package and Compat.jl.

There is no relation, I can't say I see the need?

The AnnotatedString is practically for StyledStrings, but is not the property of StyledStrings.
What is being done here is, in principle, piracy.
I do not believe that the piracy itself is the problem. However, I do think some statement should be issued about not doing it on Compat.jl.

[tecosaur]

The AnnotatedString is practically for StyledStrings, but is not the property of StyledStrings.

Ah, right I follow now.

[tecosaur]

any(_isannotated, args) # `any(_isannotated, iterator)` ?

Not quite, we do want any(_isannotated, args), but it might be worth adding || any(_isannotated, iterator).

[kimikage]

xref: https://discourse.julialang.org/t/method-overwriting-in-styledstrings-jl-v1-0-julia1-compat/113935
(for general discussions)