- From: Marcos Caceres <w3c@marcosc.com>
- Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 15:45:01 +0100
- To: Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@mit.edu>
- Cc: "public-script-coord@w3.org" <public-script-coord@w3.org>
On Thursday, October 18, 2012 at 3:11 PM, Boris Zbarsky wrote: > Consider a method declaration like so: > > MyInterface getFoo(); > > It's impossible to tell from that IDL whether you get back the same > object every time or whether the same object is returned each time, or > whether it's sometimes the same and sometimes a new one. Generally you > have to rely on the prose to indicate that, and often the writers of the > prose forget to do so. > > In Gecko, we have found it useful to annotate methods and attributes > with this sort of information (we use [Creator] for methods that always > return a new object and we're about to add an annotation for attributes > that always return the same object, but we haven't decided on a name for > it yet). > > Would it make sense to add such annotations to WebIDL so that this sort > of thing doesn't have to be described in prose? > I would be in favor of this. For example, the JS i18n API returns you a different object when you ask it for "resolved options". As an author, it would be nice to see at a glance that you get a distinct object. And as a tester, it could add some trivial automation to testing a method's behavior. -- Marcos Caceres
Received on Thursday, 18 October 2012 14:45:10 UTC