Gordon, Thank you for your reply - your comments have been most helpful. I looked into this and there is an Es4 Wiki entry on this:
http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=proposals:nullability There is also an Es4 discussion list, of which I've posted this issue and the proposal for wrapper classes: https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es4-discuss So, the discussion will continue there if anybody is interested. --- In [email protected], "Gordon Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Is there any way for us developers to influence this decision making > process? > > Yes. Check out the Community section of http://www.ecmascript.org/ > > > What is the current position this committee holds? > > I'm not sure what you mean by this. I believe the committee is an > official committee of Ecma International > (http://www.ecma-international.org/ <http://www.ecma-international.org/> > ), "an industry association founded in 1961, dedicated to the > standardization of information and communication systems." I don't know > how the committee members are selected, or how the committee's > recommendations get officially ratified by Ecma. > > > What do other languages do? > > Before I started programming in ActionScript, my background was in C++. > Types like int, float, double, and bool aren't nullable in C++. I'm not > a Java programmer, but I think Java has a primitive types like int which > aren't nullable and wrapper classes like Int (i.e., new Int(3)) which > are. I don't know how these interconvert, but I'm sure some Java > programmer on this list can tell us. I don't know what C# does. > > > Is it possible to make a Non-primitive extension type of a nullable > int, Number, Boolean in future releases (thus remaining true to the > current way of doing things, but still leaving some room for > developers)? > > I think this is what Java does, and ECMAScript could presumably do > something similar. Check out the committee's wiki to see whether they've > thought about this. > > - Gordon >
