- From: Jonas Sicking <jonas@sicking.cc>
- Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:42:23 -0800
On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 4:26 PM, Cameron McCormack <cam at mcc.id.au> wrote: > Jonas Sicking: >> So in the null column an "S" means that it's treated as "null", an "E" >> as "", but what does "N" mean? > > "N" means that I was able to determine that null was treated as the > actual null value, rather than converted to a string. So it behaves different from passing in an empty string? For some functions this surprises me, such as for the namespace parameter for getAttributeNS, I would think that we there treat "" the same as null. >> Yes, there are definitely a lot of "S"s in the null column for >> non-firefox browsers. The question to me is if this is really needed >> for webcompat though. Looking though our bug database I see no >> indication of that, but that's not necessarily a proof. >> >> If we were able to use "" as the default behavior for null then we >> would be able to get away with much fewer exceptions (so far alert() >> and and possibly write() has been found). > > OK. So what is more important for choosing the default: fewer > exceptions (and thus fewer [Null=?] things polluting the IDL), > consistency with the default stringification behaviour of ECMAScript, > or avoiding the somewhat counterintuitive default behaviour of > converting a valid value of the type to a different value of that type? "converting a valid value of the type to a different value of that type", which values exactly? I think another factor, that you haven't mentioned, that is very important is web compatibility. But beyond that I think I would rate fewer exceptions highest. / Jonas
Received on Tuesday, 13 January 2009 16:42:23 UTC