@@toStringTag spoofing for null and undefined

[Brendan Eich]

Domenic Denicola wrote:
> From: Brendan Eich [mailto:brendan at mozilla.org]
>
>> >  Can we get a leg up, rather than wait for a f2f? This thread seems fine for further discussion and simplifying proposals.
>
> Well, to be clear, I'd prefer we not change anything at all. It's too late to be tweaking something that's been set in the spec for a very long time now.
>
> But it appears that we have some relitigation on this particular topic [on the agenda anyway][1]:

Toxic terms like "relitigation", heard it from from RealAlexRussell and 
it sucked then too, are out of line -- we are not lawyers. Also, new 
TC39 rep Jordan Harband of Twitter raised this at the last meeting, 
asked Allen about working on it, got a green light.

>> >    @@toStringTag (rationales) (Jordan Harband)
>> >
>> >  - Missing unspoofable builtin values (Math, JSON, Object): spec bug
>> >  - Should built-in @@toStringTag values have { configurable: false }?
>> >  - Should Object.prototype.toString add a prefix to all non-built-in @@toStringTag values?
>
> It seems the "protections" in the spec so far have given some the misleading impression that we want to encourage O.p.toString as an unspoofable [[Class]] test. (Not that [[Class]] even exists anymore!) But as Allen points out, that's not the idea at all. And I'm loathe to perpetuate that usage of them---or even the impression that they should be used that way. (Nominal-typing bad!

That "X-typing bad!" line is not helpful. (What is this, a sports/beer 
commercial?)

Even structural typing fans such as Mark Miller have noted in their 
research results the benefits of nominal types for certain use-cases. 
Sometimes you need to know your implementation. This is the exception to 
the rule, but it's not always and everywhere "bad!".

>   Especially in ES6/ES7/etc. where proxies/value types/etc. give us the ability to perfectly emulate the characteristics of those types!)

Yes, we want to complete the MOP so nominal types are equivalent to 
branded structural types, a la Modula 3, and per David Ungar's position 
articulated many times over the years (I heard David say it to Tom Van 
Cutsem in person at SPLASH 2011, re: Proxies not interceding fully for 
all types). But we aren't there yet.

Anyway, this has little to do with getting the details of toStringTag in 
the best shape we can for ES6. Perhaps Jordan will weigh in, but in any 
case, I found his links and questions from the agenda helpful -- others 
may too. Here they are:

1. 
https://github.com/ljharb/agendas/wiki/January-TC39-@@toStringTag-discussion

2. https://bugs.ecmascript.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3506

3. Should built-in `@@toStringTag` values have `{ configurable: false }`?

4. Should `Object.prototype.toString` add a prefix to *all* non-built-in 
`@@toStringTag` values?

/be