Because the weak-map-maker constructor grants no privilege and can be generally accessible, whereas the weak-ref-maker grants the privilege of being able to observe the non-determinism of GC, and so should not be made accessible to code that shouldn't have such powers. It is the same reason why Maps and Sets, which are enumerable, enumerate their elements in a deterministic order.
In short, separation of concerns as well as separation of privileges. Those who have access to both a weak-map-maker and a weak-ref-maker can trivially build a non-deterministic enumerable-weak-map-maker if they wish. In fact, at < http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:weak_references#a_weakvaluemap> I even show another useful non-deterministic weakish-map-maker (WeakValueMap) whose utility requires observable non-determinism[1], and show how to build it from a weak-map-maker and a weak-ref-maker. [1] Either that, or I was not clever enough to build something that could serve this purpose without exposing non-determinism. If someone is more clever and does see how to do that, please speak up. Thanks. On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 8:26 PM, Brandon Benvie <[email protected]> wrote: > On 3/26/2013 1:03 PM, David Bruant wrote: > >> I'm starting to wonder whether bringing weakrefs is equivalent to having >> iterable WeakMaps... And if so, why not make WeakMaps iterable? >> > This is a question I had as well. An iterable WeakMap is nearly the same > as a Map full of WeakRefs, is it not? Just a different API that is less > usable for single references and more usable for collections. > > ______________________________**_________________ > es-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.mozilla.org/**listinfo/es-discuss<https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss> > -- Cheers, --MarkM
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