It may be beneficial to clarify in the ES5 spec that searches should take
place and lastIndex should be updated based on a copy of the value of
lastIndex made at the start of String#replace's processing. If you follow
the dependency chain--where String#replace relies on the definition of
String#match, which in turn relies on RegExp#exec--it looks to me like the
spec requires this code to become an infinite loop:
var str="0x2x3", a=["x","y","z"], i=0, re=/x/g;
alert(str.replace(re, function(){
re.lastIndex = 0;
return a[i++];
}));
However, it is not an infinite loop in 5 out of 5 browsers. It should also
be unambiguous that this would alert "0x2y3" (as it does in all the big
browsers) and not "0y2z3".
While we're discussing String#replace, is it too late to formally spec what
$n and $nn in replacement strings should mean when n is greater than the
number of capturing groups within the regex? ES 3 & 5-draft say this is
implementation-defined. Firefox 3.5, IE 8, Safari 4, Chrome 2, Opera 9.64,
and all other browsers I've tested with say that e.g. "test".replace(/(e)/,
"$2") returns "t$2st". I rely on this behavior, and I may not be the only
one.
Steve
--------------------
Steven Levithan
Baghdad, Iraq
http://blog.stevenlevithan.com
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