A couple of months ago I tried out the suggestion by Yehuda Katz to use
import syntax with special module specifiers to mean parse-as-script, do
evaluate but do not produce a module. The implementation worked well and
now I want to put a version of this idea into Traceur.
As soon as I started I ran it issues with the name. Obviously "legacy:" is
ambiguous. "script:" looks like a URL, which I suppose was intended, but
then we get into URLs in URLs. Furthermore, the URL scheme is very
cumbersome with a filesystem, you have to have some side-table or algorithm
to match URLs to directories or filenames.
I implemented postfix ",script", but that sure looks like an extension.
Which is exactly what the semantics are: a file with a different datatype
needing different processing. So it seems to me that the most honest naming
would be some thing like ".ess".
I would just implement that solution but I proposed a similar idea a while
back to Traceur team I got a lot of pushback along the lines of "JS is one
language". Since then several Traceur users have asked for support to a
non ".js" extension for loading modules, to be able to separate existing JS
code in .js files from new module code in files marked with a different
extension. Within Traceur's (mostly es6) code we have resorted to implicit
marking-by-directory ("All code in src/node is script, not module") or with
the wonderful extension of ".module.js" to mean "all the other files are
script, but this one is module". So it's JS-is-one-language with two
incompatible, unmentionable dialects ;-).
Finally, naming modules as .js and ES6 Scripts as .ess has the weird result
that ES5 scripts (in .js files) would be processed as ES6 modules. That
seems dumb. So naming the new things, modules, with a new extension makes
more sense. ".esm" seems like a obvious choice.
I know this may not seem to be the most exalted of topics for
standardization but the current choice of post-pending '.js' has real
consequences for developers. Please consider this issue.
jjb
On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 9:57 PM, Yehuda Katz <wyc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You could imagine a loader plugin that enabled:
>
> import "legacy:foo";
>
> Which would evaluate the module in a script context.
>
> Yehuda Katz
> (ph) 718.877.1325
>
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