Re: Adoption of the Typed Array Specification

On May 14, 2010, at 7:22 AM, Mike Shaver wrote:

> On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 2:09 AM, Oliver Hunt <oliver@apple.com> wrote:
>> The data is mutable, the length is not -- this is more in line with arrays in other languages, but more importantly the whole point of the typed array spec was to provide a compact typed storage mechanism.  Allowing the length to be changed runs counter to this as it effectively puts us back in the position of supporting sparse arrays.
> 
> I don't see why that's the case.  You can define the semantics such
> that length-extension zero-fills (or NaN-fills, if you like to hurt
> kittens) rather than permitting sparseness, and it would seem to meet
> all the requirements of the typedarray spec.

As Ollie mentioned, ArrayBuffers need to be able to be mapped to hardware storage (either on the CPU or GPU). So anything that might change the underlying storage address (such as resizing the array) would be problematic.

Received on Friday, 14 May 2010 14:31:05 UTC