There was at some point an attempt at elaborating "symbol" into some kind of "private name" or "private symbol", which failed for well explained reasons. However, this is not where symbols started. Symbols started as a way to introduce new properties while avoiding conflict with possible property names, IOW, as a way to introduce new property "names" that were guaranteed not to collide with any existing names. This is still their primary purpose.
On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 11:09 AM, T.J. Crowder < [email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > I've tried to glean this from the meeting notes and such, but many who > were actively involved are on the list, so: > > Am I right that Symbols started out as "private Name objects" then over > time their name was changed, they became primitives, and the privacy aspect > was dropped; but having guaranteed-unique values was still useful, and > found application (amongst other places) in solving the problem of adding a > default iterator to `Array.prototype` without name conflicts with existing > code in the wild? > > Thanks, > > -- T.J. Crowder > > _______________________________________________ > es-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss > > -- Cheers, --MarkM
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