Crockfords isEmpty

# Keryx Web (17 years ago)

Since this list lacks a good search page... And Google shows me nothing.

I suppose Douglas Crockfords wish list at javascript.crockford.com/recommend.html has been discussed. Could anyone point me to those discussions?

Lars Gunther

# Erik Arvidsson (17 years ago)

Doug is part of TG1-TC39 and his opinions have been brought up. Some of these are on the track for ES3.1 and ES4. Check out wiki.ecmascript.org for more information.

# Keryx Web (17 years ago)

Erik Arvidsson skrev:

Doug is part of TG1-TC39

Yes. I knew that...

and his opinions have been brought up.

So I supposed that!

Some of these are on the track for ES3.1 and ES4. Check out wiki.ecmascript.org for more information.

What I wanted to read was the actual arguments pro and con as well as alternatives brought up.

Especially I wanted to see if isEmpty (and function.name) had been discussed (two features I would use a lot that I now have to program around). The wiki is kind of silent on discussion. The suggestions are not even discussed in the context of ES 4. Are there any meeting notes somewhere? Or IRC logs?

Lars Gunther

# Brendan Eich (17 years ago)

On Apr 17, 2008, at 1:23 PM, Keryx Web wrote:

Especially I wanted to see if isEmpty (and function.name) had been discussed (two features I would use a lot that I now have to program around). The wiki is kind of silent on discussion.

That's because no one has proposed isEmpty for ES4. The only hit from
this site-specific search:

www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aecmascript.org+isEmpty

is this:

doku.php? id=es3.1:targeted_additions_to_array_string_object_date

The function object name property has come up:

www.google.com/search?hl=en&hs=F6X&q=site%3Aecmascript.org+% 22name+property%22

See in particular the first hit:

bugs.ecmascript.org/ticket/303

The suggestions are not even discussed in the context of ES 4. Are there any meeting notes somewhere? Or IRC logs?

doku.php? id=es3.1:targeted_additions_to_array_string_object_date

was created on 2007/04/15 with isEmpty as part of the proposal. Since
ES4 is supposed to be a superset of ES3.1

I'm surprised this hasn't been proposed to the ES4 working group.
Probably we're supposed to keep track of 3.1 proposals, and I (among
others) have failed to do so. On the other hand, everyone has had
trouble keeping up with what's current in the wiki. So we probably
need both the 3.1 and 4 groups helping each other keep up, and I'm
talking to 3.1 folks about this right now.

So, the hope is that isEmpty will make it into new editions of the
standard. I'm in favor, FWIW.

# Lars Hansen (17 years ago)

Taken literally, isEmpty always returns false in ES4 (objects always have some properties, notably the intrinsic instance methods).

Presumably the definition can be amended to say that it returns true if there are no dynamic public properties on the object (ignoring the prototype).