An array destructing specification choice

[Allen Wirfs-Brock]

On Nov 11, 2011, at 3:17 PM, David Herman wrote:

> Late to the party, but I've brought more booze.
> 
> On Nov 5, 2011, at 2:41 PM, Brendan Eich wrote:
> 
>> We have:
>> 
>> 1. Should an array pattern always query 'length'?
>> 
>> 2. If the answer to (1) is "no", then should ... in an array pattern query 'length'?
>> 
>> On reflection and at this point in the thread, with your reply in mind, my prefs in order: [no, yes], [no, no]. In no case do I favor [yes]. I'm refutably matching [no, _] :-P.
> 
> I feel strongly that the appropriate semantics is [no, yes].

Pretty much the conclusion I also came to:
On Nov 7, 2011, at 8:53 AM, Allen Wirfs-Brock wrote:

> Yes, as I mentioned in another reply array [ ] access doesn't check length. But "slicing" operations including Array.prototype.slice and Function.prototype.apply (slices from 0 to length) all do use length.
> 
> That is way [no, yes] may actually be the most consistent approach.



> ...

> 
> A pattern of the form
> 
>    [a0, a1, 〰〰, ak, ...r]
> 
> desugars to
> 
>    a0 = %v[0];
>    a1 = %v[1];
>    〰〰
>    ak = %v[k];
>    let %length = %v.length;

do we sample the length here or at the very beginning? It presumably only matter if a %v[n]  is an accessor with side-effects that modify %v.  Generally, the array functions sample length at the beginning before processing any elements.


>    r = [ %v[i] for i of [k+1, 〰〰, %length - 1] if (i in %v) ];
> 
> This can be generalized further to allow a fixed number of patterns *after* the ellipsis as well:
> 
> A pattern of the form
> 
>    [a0, a1, 〰〰, ak, ...r, bn, bn-1, 〰〰, b0]

We currently haven't specified this syntactic form.  I'm not sure if it adds enough value to justify the added conceptual complexity.

Allen