Would some like Object.inspect(myObj) be useful?

[Brendan Eich]

Hemanth H.M wrote:
> var info = { name: "Hemanth", url: "http://h3manth.com/", location : 
> "Earth", get : function() {} };
> Object.keys(info)
> ["name", "url", "location", "get"]
>
> Now, it's not clear about the 'type' of the keys; name is a String, 
> where as get is a function.
>
> Compared to something like inspect module in python that give o/p like :
>
> ('__delslice__', <method-wrapper '__delslice__' of list object at 
> 0x1005252d8>)

Python's repr convention is missed in JS, but instead of trying to force 
everything into a standard string representation, how about just 
building on ES5 (already mailed to you, sharing with list here):

js> o = {p:1, q:2, get r(){return 3}}
({p:1, q:2, get r () {return 3;}})
js> function inspect(o) {
   var a = [];
   Object.getOwnPropertyNames(o).forEach(function (k) {
     a.push(Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(o, k));
   });
   return a;
}
js> d = inspect(o)
[{configurable:true, enumerable:true, value:1, writable:true}, 
{configurable:true, enumerable:true, value:2, writable:true}, 
{configurable:true, enumerable:true, get:(function () {return 3;}), 
set:(void 0)}]

ES5 has plural Object.defineProperties for defining more than one 
property on an object, and of course Object.create that defines all the 
properties on a new object from a descriptor-map. But it doesn't have 
anything like this inspect. We could add such an 
Object.getPropertyDescriptors API, for sure.

/be

>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 10:41 PM, Allen Wirfs-Brock 
> <allen at wirfs-brock.com <mailto:allen at wirfs-brock.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     On Jun 14, 2012, at 9:49 AM, Hemanth H.M wrote:
>
>>     The inspect module provides functions for introspecting on live
>>     objects and their source code.
>
>     As do many of the ES5 methods in Object.*.  It's not clear what
>     you mean by source code in this context.
>
>     If you want to have discussion about an idea like this you have to
>     provide a much more complete description of what you have in mind.
>
>     Allen
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> /'I am what I am because of who we all are'/
> h3manth.com <http://www.h3manth.com>
> /-- Hemanth HM/
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