String literal type operators

[zamb3zi]

It would be useful if we could combine string literal types to create new types. For example suppose A and B extend string then:

type AB = A + B; // strings formed from a member of A concatenated with a member of B.
type Ax = A + string; // strings starting with a member of A
type xB = string + B; // strings ending with a member of B

This would combine well with mapped types. For example suppose we want to specify an ordering of records of type T to some third-party module that requires SQL-like syntax. We could write:

function orderBy<T>(records: Array<T>, order: (keyof T) + ('' | ' ASC' | ' DESC')) {
    ...
}
let records = [{x: 5}, {x: 2}, {x: 7}];
orderBy(records , 'x');
orderBy(records , 'x DESC');

Maybe some other forms would be useful:

type notA = !A; // any string except for the members of A
type notAx = !A + string; // strings not starting with a member of A
type AxB = A + string + B; // equal to Ax & xB
type xAx = string + A + string; // strings containing a member of A
type A3 = A * 3; // A + A + A

[mhegazy]

Should be covered by the proposal in #6579

[DanielRosenwasser]

@mhegazy I think this it depends how deep we want to go with this. Regex types are a much more generalized idea, but also bring complexity.

[gcnew]

Also it seems that Regexes are at odds with keyof. Literal concatenation (i.e. only string literals + keyof) sounds like a good compromise.

[zamb3zi]

It's not a duplicate of #6579 without some way of incorporating a keyof into a regexp, which would seem to be a can of worms.

The sticking point seems to be the use of non-enumerable types extending string apart from string itself. In mapped types, only: {[P in string]: ...} is supported but this is identical to {[key: string]: ...}.

The proposal for A + B above would take two enumerable types and create a third, so it would be usable without any further changes and fairly useful as explained in the example.

[mhegazy]

then #12754 is what you are looking for.

[typescript-bot]

Automatically closing this issue for housekeeping purposes. The issue labels indicate that it is unactionable at the moment or has already been addressed.