Object ID's

[Brendan Eich]

On Mar 21, 2007, at 7:27 AM, Igor Bukanov wrote:

> On 21/03/07, Brendan Eich <brendan at mozilla.org> wrote:
>>  Catchalls therefore look tempting for building value -
>>> value maps,
>
> It looks like the proposal misses function intrinsic::delete(ident)

Why is this needed? There's no delete hook that can be overridden, so  
the delete operator (not a function or method) can be used on any  
property, either named by lexical reference, or by obj.prop or obj 
[computed_name] or more complicated forms involving ::.

> and perhaps intrinsic::has(ident). The latter is necessary to allow to
> use objects with catchalls under with() {}.

You're right that without has (not the intrinsic::has that would be  
the override-able built-in -- but why do we need that given the in  
operator?) one cannot make with (obj) foo work when obj = {get *(id)  
{ if (id === "foo") return 42; return undefined }}. The parallel  
construct would be obj = {has *(id) {...}}. Is this really necessary  
just for with and with-like constructs (E4X's o.(e) filtering  
predicate)?

/be