Existential operator (was: ||= is much needed?)

[Brendan Eich]

Herby Vojčík wrote:
> Adn that is precisely what I proposed under name 
> [[NullPatternObject]]. So all of (1), (3), (4) and (5) are void.

Apologies, I missed that and saw only someone (perhaps it was Domenic) 
write ({}) as the default value, which is not the same.

>> Such a Nil proxy still cannot masquerade as false, though, and that is
>> required for suffix-? testing. An object that can convert to false
>> awaits value objects
>> (http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:value_objects) married
>> with proxies to make value proxies.
>
> Such a [[NullPattternObject]] can ToBoolean to false. No problem I see. 

You're right we could hardcode a special case in ToBoolean ahead of 
value objects.

To prevent this object from escaping into the language, we would need a 
special case in GetValue too. That makes this equvalent to Allen's 
conditional Reference (MaybeReference). Or were you thinking of letting 
this magic singleton esape into the language?

If so, I think you'll get serious push-back on TC39. Escaping raises the 
ante quite a bit. We have to be sure a falsy object won't confuse some 
code (SES code in particular) in a way that could lead to an exploit.

Apart from SES-focused concerns, letting the magic reference-like type 
escape exposes something ahead of schedule, before value objects in 
particular. If there's no need to let this thing escape, then we 
sholudn't. And in that case it's equivalent to MaybeReference.

/be