On May 13, 2010, at 11:09 PM, Oliver Hunt wrote: > > On May 13, 2010, at 10:21 PM, Alex Russell wrote: > >> On May 13, 2010, at 5:15 PM, Vladimir Vukicevic wrote: >> >>> This is difficult to do, given the goals of typed arrays -- they wouldn't >>> behave like normal Arrays in most meaningful ways. >> >> Sounds like a bug to be fixed ;-) >> >>> At the core, an ArrayBuffer is of fixed size, and it doesn't make sense to >>> index an ArrayBuffer directly (because there's no indication of what format >>> the data should be accessed in). Making the array view types instances of >>> Array might work, but again given that they're fixed length, there's a >>> significant difference there. >> >> >> That the length property of a particular array subclass leaves the >> constructor non-configurable and read-only isn't much of a trick in ES5. >> That said, why *doesn't* TypedArray spec a mutable variant? Surely it'd be >> useful. > > The data is mutable, the length is not -- this is more in line with arrays in > other languages, but more importantly the whole point of the typed array spec > was to provide a compact typed storage mechanism. Allowing the length to be > changed runs counter to this as it effectively puts us back in the position > of supporting sparse arrays.
To be clear, I'm supportive of a fixed-length array type for efficient handling of byte types. I'm *also* in favor of supporting mutable-length arrays for these types as well, perhaps as a separate subtype of Array or a type that shares some traits but not others. I get the need to optimize the case of "I'm representing a buffer somewhere in some C code and need to do it as fast as possible", but I just don't think that should be the exclusive use of relatively efficient byte arrays, even if it's the one that's motivating WebGL at the moment. Regards -- Alex Russell [email protected] [email protected] BE03 E88D EABB 2116 CC49 8259 CF78 E242 59C3 9723 _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
