On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 1:29 PM, Dean Landolt <d...@deanlandolt.com> wrote:
> > > On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 1:17 PM, David Herman <dher...@mozilla.com> wrote: > >> On Nov 18, 2011, at 2:00 AM, Peter van der Zee wrote: >> >> > On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 10:02 PM, Brendan Eich <bren...@mozilla.com> >> wrote: >> >> On Nov 17, 2011, at 11:26 AM, Dean Landolt wrote: >> >> >> >>> Who can resist such a juicy bikeshed... >> > >> > Please keep the general js api consistent. >> >> A foolish consistency... >> >> We also use 'hasOwnProperty' and 'forEach' and 'toLocaleString' in JS. >> Why not use those names? Because it's not the same operation. Neither is it >> the same thing as .length. An array is a sequential data structure, so it >> uses .length. A map and a set is not a sequential data structure, so it >> should not. >> > > > As a thought experiment imagine someone were to propose > Object.prototype.length -- what exactly would you expect that to mean? How > would this be any different than Map.prototype.length? It'd be just as > nonsensical. I could see `keyLength` being here, and something like > `itemLength` being logical for sets, but these two concepts really are the > same. It could also be said that a set's `itemLength` is the same concept > as an array's. > > This merits a new property, delegating the length property where it makes > sense (sequences). IMHO the `count` property captures this intension > nicely. Something like this, perhaps: > > Object.prototype.count => total keys > Map.prototype.count => total keys > Set.prototype.count => total items > Array.prototype.length => length > Array.prototype.count => Array.prototype.length (sans holes?) > String.prototype.length => length > String.prototype.count => String.prototype.length > Hmm...more consistent would be for Array.prototype.count to skip holes *and* add in the count of non-integer keys. This would be a very handy addition to the standard lib -- IIUC there's no efficient way to do this now. Would it be asking too much for String.prototype.count to return total unicode characters? :P
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