On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 9:42 AM, Brendan Eich <bren...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> On Mar 11, 2009, at 4:20 AM, Tobie Langel wrote:
>
>> It is very useful to be able to specify the debugging representation of an
>> object distinctively from it's toJSON or toString representation.
>>
>> We've been using that to great effect in Prototype, to help out, for
>> example, with the debugging representation of DOM Elements:
>>
>> <div id="foo" class="foo bar">
>>
>> is a much more useful representation than:
>>
>> [object HTMLDivElement]
>
>
> True, although you have to ampersand-escape it if it flows into markup.
>
>
>> Indeed, Object.prototype.toSource seems closer to what I was interested
>> in. Unfortunately, it's
>>
>> 1) non standardized, and
>> 2) apparently used internally by FF[1].
>>
>> To be useful for debugging, such a method needs to provide a good default
>> value and be easily overridden for custom objects. I wouldn't be too keen on
>> overriding a method which the browser vendor claims to use internally.
>
> What text in the link you give made you think anything of the sort? I see no
> use of "internally" or "internal" in that wiki page. You can override
> toSource just as you can override toString. Doing so in a content window
> cannot possibly affect the operation of the browser's user interface
> ("chrome") windows.
>
I prefer to use the term "shadow" to override. In the example below,
C.prototype.toSource shadows Object.prototype.toSource;
function C(){
this.name = "c1";
}
C.prototype = {
name : "c",
title : "a C object",
toSource : function() {
return this.name + "::C\n" +
Object.prototype.toSource.call(this);
}
};
Result:
c1::C
({name:"c1"})
Perhaps you would like to use a for-in loop to debug properties;
for(var p in this) {
// build a string.
}
?
Garrett
> /be
>
>>
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Tobie
>>
>> [1]
>> https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Core_JavaScript_1.5_Reference/Global_Objects/Object/toSource
>>
>>
>> On Mar 11, 2009, at 00:01 , Jason Orendorff wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 9:18 PM, Tobie Langel <tobie.lan...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The lack of a more developer-friendly representation of objects than the
>>>> one
>>>> obtained through their toString method (or by calling
>>>> Object.prototype.toString) made me long for an ES equivalent of Ruby's
>>>> inspect instance method.
>>>
>>> You could use JSON.stringify(obj), which is on track to be
>>> standardized in ES3.1.
>>>
>>> (SpiderMonkey has the nonstandard uneval, as well as
>>> Object.prototype.toSource, which I think are a bit closer to what you
>>> want.)
>>>
>>> -j
>>
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