On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 3:36 PM, Ash Berlin <ash...@firemirror.com> wrote:
> > On 2 Jul 2010, at 23:17, David Flanagan wrote: > > > Mark S. Miller wrote: > > However, many objected to "ephemeron" as obscure > >> jargon. We have not yet settled the name we are giving this > abstraction. > > > > It is the language of GC implementors, and won't make sense to JS > programmers. > > > >> I'll be happy with almost any name that everyone else can agree to that > isn't technically incorrect, i.e., not "WeakKeyTable". > >> If we can't agree on anything else, I propose that we default to > "EphemeronTable". It has the virtues of > >> * being technically correct > >> * giving credit where due > >> * unlikely to conflict with any other names in use by legacy JS code. > > > > How about EphemeralMap? > > > > Changing the obscure noun Ephemeron to an adjective reduces the > jargon-level substantially, but retains the three virtues Mark lists. > > > > This name make even more sense to JS programmers if Harmony also > introduced an ordinary Map class for mapping objects to values with regular > strong references. (I assume there is some way to build an ordinary Map on > top of an ephemeron table.) > > > > David > > Without meaning to tread on anyone's toes here, from my PoV as someone who > doesn't work on any JS engine its the Ephemer{al,on} part that is > confusing/obscure. > > Is some variation based around "Weak" not possible? > How about ATableThatDoesWhatManyPeopleThinkWeakKeyTablesDo ;). More seriously, without prior knowledge of either weak pointers or ephemerons, "ephemeral" seems more self explanatory than "weak". > _______________________________________________ > es-discuss mailing list > es-discuss@mozilla.org > https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss > -- Cheers, --MarkM
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