[whatwg] About the internal structured cloning algorithm

David Bruant bruant at enseirb-matmeca.fr
Sat Jan 8 10:42:23 PST 2011


I have two distinct things to say about this algorithm.

First of all, at Step 5 :
"If input is an Array object or an Object object, then, for each 
enumerable property in input, add a corresponding property to output 
having the same name, and having a value created from invoking the 
internal structured cloning algorithm recursively with the value of the 
property as the "input" argument and memory as the "memory" argument. 
The order of the properties in the input and output objects must be the 
same.

Note : This does not walk the prototype chain."

This seems to be the description of the ECMAScript 5 Object.keys  method 
definition (ES5 section 15.2.3.14).
In ECMAScript 5, properties of an object which aren't on the prototype 
chain are often (if not always) refered as "own properties".
And the Object.keys method returns all own enumerable property names.


Second of all, I am wondering if HTML5 is the right place to define such 
an "algorithm". This seems to be extremely bound to ECMAScript (Date, 
RegExp...). As such wouldn't WebIDL be a better place to define such an 
algorithm ?

What's your opinion?

David


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