We need to name "EphemeronTable" (was: Do we need an experimental extension naming convention?)

David Flanagan david at davidflanagan.com
Fri Jul 2 15:17:06 PDT 2010


Mark S. Miller wrote:
  However, many objected to "ephemeron" as obscure
>     jargon. We have not yet settled the name we are giving this abstraction.
> 

It is the language of GC implementors, and won't make sense to JS 
programmers.

>  I'll be 
> happy with almost any name that everyone else can agree to that isn't 
> technically incorrect, i.e., not "WeakKeyTable".
> 
> If we can't agree on anything else, I propose that we default to 
> "EphemeronTable". It has the virtues of
> * being technically correct
> * giving credit where due
> * unlikely to conflict with any other names in use by legacy JS code.
> 

How about EphemeralMap?

Changing the obscure noun Ephemeron to an adjective reduces the 
jargon-level substantially, but retains the three virtues Mark lists.

This name make even more sense to JS programmers if Harmony also 
introduced an ordinary Map class for mapping objects to values with 
regular strong references.  (I assume there is some way to build an 
ordinary Map on top of an ephemeron table.)

	David


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