Re: Recommendations for the Fourth Edition of the ECMAScript Programming Language Specification

Doug Crockford has posted some recommendations to improve JavaScript.

I have some comments in the context of my experience with live-patching JavaScript issues with libraries.

New Features

Function Reflection

Doug recommends that function objects contain a "name" property. Some versions of JavaScript actually have this already. This could be handy but I haven't needed this and would not be likely to use it. I was surprised that FireFox had this when I used a Function in a with block. I've learned my lesson.

However, Doug also recommends the addition of an arguments member to Function objects. This is a critical feature. The arguments array would contain the names of all of the functions declared argument variables. Function objects already have a length member that corresponds to the length of this hypothetical arguments array. There was some buzz about using this value for method overloading and it permitted me to create an elegant partial application decorator. If we had access to the names of a function's argument declarations, I could implement a decorator for supporting Python-style positional and named arguments. Decorated functions would accept an array/list of positional arguments and an object/dict/map of keyword arguments and the decorator would translate them to an array for a wrapped Function.apply. That decorator or further decorators could support default values and automatic argument length assertions.

typeOf

Doug notes that JavaScript's typeof "function" is broken because it returns the wrong strings for null and arrays. All that and he hints that using camelCase instead of lowercase would have been more in keeping with the language's aesthetic. He recommends that we deprecate typeof and replace it with a fixed version called typeOf. I would go a step further. typeof returns a string. I propose that it ought to return the type object. This would jive well with instanceof, instanceOf, or isInstance. This means there should be a Null type that would construct null and an Undefined type to construct undefined.

Object Methods

Don't Enum

I don' particularly care whether Object has a dontEnum method since I don't augment base types and wrap them when I need reliable collection types, but this would help ameliorate integration woes with prototype so it's a good idea.

Array of Keys

Doug wants a Object.arrayOfKeys method. I want a keys method that returns a Set. I would also like keysIter and, less emphatically, keysArray. I don't want the name arrayOfKeys because it introduces an unnecessary Of and doesn't sort as well as keys*.

Array of Values.

Doug also wants Object.arrayOfValues. I want values and valuesIter. These should return Array and Iter object respectively.

toJsonString

Object.toJSONString(memberName). The first thing that comes to mind to improve this idea is to rename it toJsonString; I prefer to consider acronyms words and I would have also called XMLHttpRequest XmlHttpRequest. This name jives well with toString, but I would have called that string. But, I actually would call this repr and made it a global function. repr would work on arbitrary objects, a subset of which would be serializable JSON. The behavior of repr would be overridable by providing a repr method on an object.

Beget Object

Doug recommends that Prototype inheritance be a little more lucid by providing a beget function that returns a new, empty Object that inherits from the previous. I like this idea. I called it inherit in Chiron.

isEmpty

isEmpty would return whether an object has any properties, other than those inherited. Sounds fine to me, although I probably would have just used number and boolean casting. This is a good idea too though, because in JavaScript, it's hard to distinguish an Object that is being used as the base of the inheritance tree and an Object that is being used as a hash-map. To that end, I recommend the addition of a Map type. Map would have isEmpty, number, and boolean functions and would implicitly cast to Number and Boolean based on their length that would be reflected publically by the getLength function.

Array Methods

Doug recommends the addition of some of Mozilla's JavaScript 1.6 Array methods. I support all of them. However, some nomenclature refinements and specifications:

indexOf should be augmented by a find function that throws a KeyError instead of returning a negative index.

lastIndexOf should be augmented by a findLast function similar to find.

every should be called all. This function should accept an iterator or iterable and short circuit on the first failure.

filter should be called where. Filtering implies the opposite of finding. To filter something is to remove it from a stream if it passes a particular condition. where implies that the outgoing stream should contain only those elements from the original stream that affirm the guard.

forEach is good as is. I would like to specify that it should return this so that forEach calls can be chained. This has implications on iterations that are partially consumed by a forEach call that throws a StopIteration exception in its continuation.

map is good as is. As a member of an array, each should be a synonym. These functions should also be declared in global scope with opposite argument order: map(function, collection, [context]) vs each(collection, function, [context]).

some should be called any. This function should accept an iterator or iterable and short circuit on the first success.

String Methods

trim is good as is. There should also be trimBegin and trimEnd or trimFirst and trimLast.

string.eval is a good idea, but I've got my own ways to launder the scope chain for eval.

Date Methods

Date.toJSONString and Date.toISOString are both great ideas; not having them has been a problem for me in the past. I recommend calling them toJsonString and toIsoString.

Corrections

Reserved Words

Doug argues that identifiers in object literal notation and member dot notation should allow reserved words. I concur. It's a small syntax shortcut that identifiers used in member selection and object literal notation are not required to be enquoted; the language should be equally permissive for both syntax forms.

Doug also argues that the list of reserved words is too long. I have mixed feelings. On one hand, having a long list of reserved identifiers leaves open the door for future advances in the language (some of which include type annotations, which I find dubious). On the other hand, they muddy the name space for current code. On the latter note, it's important that all browsers are equally strict. Safari, at the moment, is much more strict than other browsers, so I've been surprised.

Object Literal Notation

I agree that commas should be more regular throughout the language. They should be permitted after any value, including the last in an Object or Array literal without affecting the length of either.

arguments

arguments should definitely be an instance of an Arguments type that inherits from Array.

Inner Functions and the Context Object (this)

I agree that this should not be the global object (window) in inner or anonymous functions. this should be acquired from the scope chain in such closures. Doug claims that this is not the standard. I recall being corrected on this point, but I also recall having been under the same impression. I leave this as an exercise to the reader to determine the current state of affairs in various browsers.

Tail Recursion

Tail recursion would be nice.

Deprecation

Primitive wrappers should be eliminated. Boxing is almost never necessary. In fact, the use of the new keyword could be completely obviated and code would become much more reusable since there would be no distinction between a factory method and an object constructor.

I actually use the with statement in a couple cases that are really important. I don't recommend using it for its designed purpose, but I really do need it to stay in the language for my module system and my JavaScript shell to keep working. FireBug, in particular, depends on this feature.

Semicolon insertion was silly. Off with its head.

I don't particularly care about arguments.callee.

typeof has to go.

Again, eval is a necessary part of my perverse world. I can do my own laundry. There are, however, irresponsible uses of eval that I do not condone.