I'd like to propose a "namespace()" function to the base ECMAScript language. (I previously thought about this only in terms of JavaScript, but I'm guessing it really belongs in ECMAScript?)
I've previously blogged about this at http://blogger.ziesemer.com/2007/10/respecting-javascript-global-namespace.html and http://blogger.ziesemer.com/2008/05/javascript-namespace-function.html , having actually become part of the review process for Firefox add-ons, being linked to from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/docs/policies/reviews . While it is easy enough to define and use such a namespace function without it being included in the base language, the same could be said for the new String.trim functions that were just recently added. I further feel that it would be very beneficial to have a "namespace" function declared in a standard rather than being used in an ad-hoc fashion, as this would hopefully discourage others from declaring a global "namespace" function that is unrelated or otherwise incompatible. Finally, I think that this would be an important addition, especially with the amount of JavaScript being combined into web pages today. (I could come up with many more reasons, but I think this is a pretty good summary to start with.) I understand that at best, this would probably not appear until a later version of the specification. In the meantime, it could continue to be supported as a back-portable extension, such as the Array extras. However, most importantly, it would define this as part of the (future) "language standard". Here is the actual function I am proposing, just so you don't have to click through: var namespace = function(name, separator, container){ var ns = name.split(separator || '.'), o = container || window, i, len; for(i = 0, len = ns.length; i < len; i++){ o = o[ns[i]] = o[ns[i]] || {}; } return o; }; Example of use: namespace("com.example.namespace"); com.example.namespace.test = function(){ alert("In namespaced function."); }; Or, as one statement: namespace("com.example.namespace").test = function(){ alert("In namespaced function."); }; Either is then executed as: com.example.namespace.test(); Thanks for your consideration. -- Mark A. Ziesemer www.ziesemer.com _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
