Reading [1] in the digests, I think there might actually be an API improvement that is doable.
Suppose the String.prototype.replace API allowed passing in a single argument, a Map instance where the keys were strings or regular expressions and the values were replacement strings or functions. Advantages: * Shorthand - instead of writing str.replace(a, b).replace(c, d).replace(e, f)... you get str.replace(regExpMap) * Reusable - the same regular expression/string map could be used for several strings (assuming of course the user didn't just abstract the call into a separate function) * Modifiable on demand - developers could easily add new regular expression matches to the map object, or remove them * It wouldn't necessarily break existing API, since String.prototype.replace currently accepts only RegExp or strings. Disadvantages / reasons not to do it: * Detecting collisions between matching regular expressions or strings. If two regular expressions match the same string, or a regular expression and a search string match, the expected results may vary because a Map's elements might not be consistently ordered. I don't know if the ECMAScript spec mandates preserving a particular order to a Map's elements. - if we preserve the same chaining capability (str.replace(map1).replace(map2)...), this might not be a big problem. The question is, how often do people chain replace calls together? * It's not particularly hard to chain several replace calls together. It's just verbose, which might not be a high enough burden to overcome for adding API. That's my two cents for the day. Thoughts? [1] https://esdiscuss.org/topic/adding-map-directly-to-string-prototype -- "The first step in confirming there is a bug in someone else's work is confirming there are no bugs in your own." -- Alexander J. Vincent, June 30, 2001
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