I can't imagine actually getting consensus on making the current default change from sparse to dense. We've rejected many breaking changes that were less breaking than this would be.
The subclass notion is interesting though. Reads dominate writes, and frozen arrays can only be read anyway. Liskov substitutability on reads suggests that dense arrays be a subclass of sparse -- it provides stronger guarantees. Arranging the subclassing that way would also not be a breaking change. On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 9:03 AM, Allen Wirfs-Brock <[email protected]>wrote: > A couple observations: > > 1) this whole issue is only relevant if you actually have array objects > containing holes. Special treat for sparse arrays doesn't hurt anybody > (other than implementors) who doesn't use them. > > 2) If we (and the broader developer community) don't like sparse behavior > for Array then rather than introducing additional inconsistencies about the > handling of hole (for example, making Array.forEach and for-of on a sparse > array different) it would be better to simply see if we can eliminate (or > compartmentalize) the sparse behavior of arrays. > > Some possible approaches > > 1) Make all array instances dense and see what really breaks. Possibly > provide a new SparseArray "subclass". Anyone brave enough to do the > experiment? > > 2) Formalize the concept of sparseness into either a selectable attribute > of arrays or as a special "subclass" of array. Most current obviously > non-sparse usages get the dense version: > > var aDenseArray = [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7]; > var aSparseArray = [,,,,,,7]; > > console.log.(aDenseArray.isSparse()); //false > console.log.(aSparseArray.isSparse()); //true > > var dense2 = new Array(0,1,2,3,4,5); > > var dense3 = new Array(1000); > console.log.(dense3.isSparse()); //false > > var sparse2 = new Array(1001); > console.log.(dense3.isSparse()); //true > > var sparse3 = Array.sparse(); > console.log.(sparse3.isSparse()); //true > > Allen > _______________________________________________ > es-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss > -- Cheers, --MarkM
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