This feature is particularly useful for framework authors and their users. Countless times I've found myself using a browser's console debugging tool to figure out why something's busted. In these cases, I nearly always resort to navigating to some JS framework's website for their documentation or scrutinizing their code directly to figure out what's going wrong. If I could just call 'printHelp(xyz....someMethod)', less of my time would be used. The other bit of utility here is that framework documentation can live side-by-side with the code and be automatically generated from it (e.g., http://pydoc.org/2.5.1/timeit.html) as opposed to maintaining it separately. A very useful feature to have from my Python-biased perspective:)
My best, Dave From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dmitry A. Soshnikov Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 7:42 AM To: Rick Waldron Cc: Brendan Eich; es-discuss Steen Subject: Re: __doc__ for functions, classes, objects etc. On 30.08.2011 17:41, Rick Waldron wrote: On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 3:39 AM, Dmitry A. Soshnikov <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: OK, let's up the topic. Seems there are no technical issues in the proposed thing -- we can simply either accept it or not. The question is whether it's needed and sound proposal and the feature to have in ECMAScript. Some summarized features below: + Ability to get help of any built-in and any user-defined function directly in runtime (in later case, authors should provide the documentations though) + Auto-suggest and hints of parameters and their types when typing function name in console. + Ability even to have sort of guards for types with issuing warnings in case if types mismatch (sort of recent contract.coffee projects and actually other langs, e.g. Haskell, Erlang, etc). - Code size will be increased to store the doc string. This can be optional in case of minimized scripts (lint tools can have option "Remove doc-comments") As an example I show a spec description for `parseInt` function: 15.1.2.2 parseInt (string , radix) Let [[Documentation]] property of the `parseInt` function be the following string: "The parseInt function produces an integer value dictated by interpretation of the contents of the string argument according to the specified radix. Leading white space in string is ignored. If radix is undefined or 0, it is assumed to be 10 except when the number begins with the character pairs 0x or 0X, in which case a radix of 16 is assumed. If radix is 16, number may also optionally begin with the character pairs 0x or 0X." ... x.x.xx help(F) A built-in, global object function property named "help()" will no doubt conflict with userland code It's derived question, we may choose any name which fits well (though, IMO `help` name isn't used much). The main thing I want to clarify at this step, whether we need at all this thing in ES? Since committee keeps silence, I'd like to consider it better as "Yes, we need it and there is nothing to add", rather than "We don't need and don't want even to discuss" (since there is no big sense in later, because the functionality seems useful). However, we need to clarify how *exactly* it's useful. Maybe using JS in console is so rare case and it isn't required much. OTOH, era of client-side-only-JS is behind and JS is also on server now. And from this viewpoint, in the console, it's the best to get the help, hints for parameters and even type checking for functions. So, what should I do to apply the first meaning? Dmitry. When the `help` function is called on the F object, the following steps are taken: 1. If [[Class]] of the function is not "Function" throw TypeError 2. Let doc be [[Documentation]] property of F 2.1 If doc is `undefined` return empty string 2.2. return String(doc) It's a simplified version of course (moreover, Allen wanted to eliminate [[Class]], so -- it's just an example). Do we need this? Dmitry. On 09.08.2011 23:59, Dmitry A. Soshnikov wrote: On 23.08.2011 20:54, Brendan Eich wrote: A convenient notation for multiline documentation comments, with convenient reflection (*not* via toString() scraping!), would be a fine thing. Yes, exactly this -- help(...) function, and also good auto-complete of object methods helped me some time ago formerly to learn Python very quickly just playing with it in console. By the way, ECMAScript (who will take responsibility to implement the ECMAScript -- ethanol implementation? :)) also needs some installation binaries with the console. And yes -- with this great features for learning -- auto-complete of methods (the best thing to investigate objects just pressing `tab`) and help(...) function. I remember ES4 had/has the REPL, why not ES5? Of course we have all those consoles directly from the browsers (and also Node.js REPL), but it could be useful. Anyway, it's another topic, just relatively touches help(...) functions. Some of the design dimensions: 0. Comment vs. string / quasiliteral? 1. function-only, or object literal too -- or any declaration? I think functions are the main case, yes. Not sure about literals, since there are open issues such as, "how to document a property" (via descriptor field?)? 2. Before function, a la javadoc comments, or first thing in body, a la the prologue directive idea? That's said, if "before", then we should consider white-spaces and newlines after the comment and before the function header (though, as well as in the prologue). If "before", then tones of old code written in javadoc will just work with the new engine. OTOH, this means that the exact syntax of javadocs will be standardized at the level of the spec (and it's a sound thing -- people will have to write exactly e.g. @property that the "doc-er" catch it correctly. OTOH again -- why not? -- to standardize common syntax of documenting functions). However, the spec may not parse the exact content of the comment but just save it as a string, regardless of what is written insides. A variant with "inside" is also good, underlines that the comment is sort of a function's "property" (I like yours simple "doc" name for that). Both variants are good, just "outside" has the advantage that the old code will just hook on it. 3. Reflected via function .doc property, a Function.extractDocComment static method, or something even more mirror-like/stratified? Yes, both are fine, ".doc" is great. Perhaps, even global binding help(...). I'm not sure what is best, I lack experience programming in languages with doc-comment or triple-quoted equivalents (Python attached tests, e.g.). Comments (heh) welcome. Thinking about 1, I would start with function-only. Yes, this is the main case. For 2 I'm inclined to say "in body" because it's too easy to lose the "before" context during the life of a function, compared to losing part of the body by accident. At first glance there should be no issues with parsing in both cases. We sure have to restrict that only the first multiline comment from _above_ of a function is treated as doc-comment. It will not touch any other upper-comments // this one isn't caught /* and this one also */ /** * but this is OK */ function foo() {} console.log(foo.doc); // "but this is OK" With the prologue -- there also directives' places should be considered. I think the best place for them is under the doc-comment. function foo() { "" My function """ "use strict"; } Regarding 3, I bet Function.extractDocComment or a better name wins, especially if the whole solution allows monkey-patching a polyfill for downrev browsers that support source recovery (not SpiderMonkey's decompiler). Yes, maybe. Dmitry. _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
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