Default operator strawman - ||| rather than ??

[John Lenz]

My two sense.  In my experience (large applications, rather than tight
libraries), distinguishing between null and undefined is the exception, not
the rule.  When it is distinguished, as often as not the author would be
more correct in either including null or making an property existence
check (foo in bar) rather than an explicit check for undefined.

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Brendan Eich <brendan at mozilla.org> wrote:

> Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>
>> Okay, further testing shows that my knowledge was incomplete.  Null
>> and undefined compare as double-equal, but neither are double-equal to
>> other falsey values.
>>
>
> This is intentional, believe it or don't :-P.
>
> In ancient days, void 0 was the only way to spell undefined, and users
> immediately tested o.p != null to existing-check. There was even some
> confusion where missing array elements in primordial JS evaluated to null
> not undefined. Argh, I had made myself forget that, now I remember.
>
>
>  However, my argument stands - being undefined-specific is not
>> arbitrary, because that's what is actually returned by such things.
>> Both args without values and properties that don't exist give the
>> value undefined when you try to reference them.
>>
>
> Agree still. I do not see use-cases for including null. Maybe they exist,
> though -- someone please cite some github-hosted JS.
>
> Even the Node workaround/premature-**optimization of storing null rather
> than using delete doesn't argue for defaulting based on LHS value in {null,
> undefined}.
>
>
>   Using a double-equal
>> check against null to test for whether something is undefined only
>> works because double-equal is pretty screwed up.
>>
>
> It is screwed up but for reasons. Bad reasons, kind of like history or
> biology. Not just Homer Simpson "Life is just a bunch of things that
> happen" randomness, mind you! :-P
>
> The most principled reason I've heard, IIRC from @jashkenas, is that null
> and undefined are confusingly similar, in part due to being ==. This is
> true, but I still do not see actual use-cases where null is passed into
> code that uses || to select a default value. Would love to see such
> real-world code.
>
> /be
>
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