Hello Jürg, Sunday, April 18, 2010, 6:35:50 PM, you wrote:
> I am aware that these function names are probably set in stone by > now, but am curious to hear the reasons for their naming, as there > seem to be many discrepancies in there, mostly: > - The use of both 'key' and 'name' for the same thing > - The omitting of 'get' in Object.keys > In terms of a clean API, something along these lines would have seemed more > consistent: > Object.getKeys > Object.getOwnKeys Actually, the implementation of these methods isn't corresponding much with method names. Thus, "Object.keys" returns also only /own/ property names, but -- excluding those with [[Enumerable]] false. And "Object.getOwnPropertyNames" does the same but including [[Enumerable]] = false. Moreover, as I mentioned, "keys" name has nothing with current ECMAScript abstraction level. In contrast with other languages where there is separation of dot -- "." -- and bracket -- "[]" -- notations for property accessors, in ES there's no such discrimination. Therefore, here all of them are /properties/ and there is no devision on /keys/array indexes/properties/ So, Ruby, from which "Object.keys" was borrowed into Prototype.js library, in this case has exactly "keys" of a /hash/ -- and this name is acceptable. Because along with "keys" a hash also has "properties" and "methods". But not in ES, where there are only properties. "Object.keys" which contradicts to all other method names in ideology and stylistics (and has nothing with previous ES specs and implementations) in my opinion is error of the ES5 spec. It is also relates to why term "hash" (often used to name ES objects), /regardless that on implementation level exactly this theoretical data structure can be used -- hash-table/ doesn't fit and is improper -- http://bit.ly/cA3bwY So, ES has no "keys" concept. > As I am new to the community process of EcmaScript but strongly > involved with the language for soon 10 years through projects like > Scriptographer.org and Helma.org, and therefore concerned with the > language's future, I am curious to find out more about these > processes of the defining of the language's API and syntax. Just two days ago the similar question has been raised, see: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es-discuss/2010-April/010908.html Dmitry. _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
