ES3.1 Draft: String generics

[Pratap Lakshman (VJ#SDK)]

I have uploaded to the wiki a draft proposal<http://wiki.ecmascript.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?id=es3.1%3Atargeted_additions_to_array_string_object_date&cache=cache&media=es3.1:es31_stringobject.pdf> to add a couple of generics to the String object. In order to retain the subset relationship with proposed ES4, these should be considered for addition to ES4 too.

I have extracted the String portion of the ES3 spec, added a rationale (with hyperlinks) at the beginning, and made relevant changes to the included section 15.5 text, with some comments added. I have tried to be mindful of compat.

pratap


From: Brendan Eich [mailto:brendan at mozilla.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 5:21 AM
To: Pratap Lakshman (VJ#SDK)
Cc: es3.x-discuss at mozilla.org
Subject: Re: Static generics on String

On Apr 30, 2008, at 8:58 AM, Pratap Lakshman (VJ#SDK) wrote:
Yes, I did notice that these are already on String.prototype, and that they are generic. Is proposed-ES4 going to add a static method of the same name for each such prototype generic method?!

Yes.


The ES3 String.prototype methods generally specify that ToString is applied to "this" and to string arguments. Is it also the case for the String generics? If so, it would seen to limit their utility for string like wrappers or alternative string representations?

The ToString is ok if you are willing to tolerate the overhead of a copy. Alternative is to do length and indexed accesses to the wrapper, which forwards to the java.lang.String or similar. But that changes how ES1-3 are spec'ed and it's work -- and premature optimization is the root of all evil.


Is your experience that the static generic string methods have "carried their weight" in your implementations. In other words, based upon your experience would you recommend their inclusion in ES3.1?

Not for 3.1. They are cheap to implement but 3.1 has enough to do, and the String static generics are not big-bang-for-the-buck.


Is there a general rule for where we (proposed-ES4 & ES3.1) should add any new generic methods? In ES3.1 we are considering adding a "trim" and a "quote" method for Strings, and I was thinking of adding these on String.prototype (just like the other generic methods). However, the static generics proposal page suggests that they should then also be added as statics on String.

If you skip adding any static generics for 3.1, no worries.

Can you say more about quote? We've implemented it for years. Need to get it into both 3.1 and 4 to keep the subset relation.


To conform to the rest of the ES3, I shall propose adding these methods (trim and quote) to String.prototype only, and not create a parallel set of statics.
Do you see any issues with this proposal?
No, that sounds good. Let's just get quote on the ES4 radar. Is there a spec for it?

/be
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