Sure thing Rick, I will definitely do that.

I'd love to hear any current thoughts and feedback around the idea though.

Thanks!

- Jonathan Barronville
@jonathanmarvens

On October 21, 2013 at 1:26:57 AM, Rick Waldron (waldron.rick at gmail.com) wrote:




On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 9:01 AM, Jonathan Barronville <jonathan at belairlabs.com> wrote:
Hi everyone.

I have a proposal for ES6. I don't know if it's been discussed before, so if it has, I don't mean to waste your time … hopefully, I'll be directed to the right place.

One of the most debated JavaScript topics (at least in my experience) is whether or not one should modify objects that don't belong to them ... some say it's okay if you "know what you're doing" and others see it as a crime.

I propose we solve this problem by adding "refinements" to ES6. Ruby v2.0.0 introduced a nice little feature dubbed "refinements". Refinements allow you to extend other objects for specific modules of code. I know this isn't a Ruby mailing list, but because the inspiration comes from the Ruby implementation, an example is in order (feel free to ignore it).

Say you want to modify the `to_str()` method in the built-in String class in Ruby, the common way to do this is as follows.

```ruby
class String
  def to_str()
    "Blah, blah, blah ... this is an example."
  end
end
```

Very simple ... just re-open the class and create a method with the same name. However, there's a problem with this, which happens to be the same problem we have in JavaScript, and that's the fact that we've now just modified this method permanently for the rest of the execution.

Well, with refinements, the better way of accomplishing the same thing is as follows.

```ruby
module MyLibrary
  refine(String) do
    def to_str()
      "Blah, blah, blah ... this is an example."
    end
  end
end
```

Now, if you try to send `to_str()` to, say, a string object `"hello"` (`"hello".to_str()`), you'll get the original `"hello"` as a return value. In order to use the refinements made to the class, you have to do the following.

```ruby
using MyLibrary

puts("hello".to_str())
```

Running the code above properly outputs the string `Blah, blah, blah ... this is an example.`.

Refinements can only be used after a `using` statement and only within that file.

Given that we're already getting modules in ES6, I believe something similar to this would be a great addition to the language.

I can definitely work on a more in-depth and detailed proposal, with specific JavaScript examples, if needed, but I just would like to hear thoughts around the idea.

Thanks!

I think this idea is certainly worth writing a strawman for, but it's too late in the ES6 cycle and this couldn't even be considered until ES7. Would you be willing to write up a "Refinements" strawman with some proposed ES-centric syntax and some preliminary semantics sketched? 

Rick


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Sure thing Rick, I will definitely do that.

I'd love to hear any current thoughts and feedback around the idea though.