IIUC, the problem with symbols-as-primitives is that, on one hand, wrapper objects are not wanted, but, on the other hand, getting rid of wrappers leads to complications.
My suggestion is to allow wrapper objects to exist in the spec, but to completely hide them from the user by doing an implicit unwrapping whenever applicable. Thus, for any primitive class `P` (such as `Symbol`, `Bignum`), except for legacy ones (`Number`, `Boolean` and `String`). * `new P` produces an unwrapped value; * `p => Object(p)` becomes a no-op; * `Object.defineProperty`, Object.getPrototypeOf`, etc., return an unwrapped value when applicable; * plus some further details I've forgotten. (Technically, I think naively that it suffices to define an `UnwrapIfNonLegacyPrimitive()` abstract operation and to apply it in correct places.) Moreover, in order to make primitives look more like objects, some adjustments could be done: * `instanceof` could wrap its LHS if it is a primitive value instead of throwing an error, so that tests like `s instanceof Symbol` would work; * Wrappers should be frozen at creation, so that things like `s.foo = 17` or `Object.setPrototypeOf(s, bar)` would fail noisily (at least in strict mode); * etc. —Claude _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
