TLDR: I'm asking for the group to consider adding a Function.isPure(func) or isPureWithinScope() to the ECMAScript specification, to help code detect pure functions.
This morning, I had a thought experiment about membranes, and in particular, callback functions passed into them. If the callback function is called repeatedly for objects that will not be needed again, that means one extra proxy for each object, which the membrane must remember. That's effectively a memory leak. This led down a long, rambling path [1] where I then realized: if the callback function is a pure function, then for the purposes of that callback, the arguments probably do not need to be wrapped in proxies at all. The big catch is that the callback can't store any of the arguments in variables external to the callback (a classic side effect). If the function really is pure, though, I can avoid the memory leak. But how can I tell from JavaScript, easily, whether a function is pure or not? For reference, a quick search on es-discuss found [2], which is probably worth re-reading. Determining whether a function is pure or not (or "only uses these objects") is probably best left up to JavaScript parsers. Although it could be done using esprima, I suppose, that's a lot to ask of a membrane. So the first question I have is, would this group actively consider adding a built-in Function.isPure(func) method to the ECMAScript language? (Or Function.prototype.isPure(), but I prefer the former.) Further, in the case where a function isn't pure but its side effects are confined to local variables that won't live longer than the callback, that might also be safe for not wrapping in the membrane. I'm thinking of a DOM NodeFilter object where the acceptNode method modifies the filter, but the filter is defined via a let statement in a small scope statement-block. Since I don't know what to call this kind of function, I'll temporarily call it "pure within a scope" until someone corrects me. What I mean by "pure within a scope" is that the function's only side effects involve objects within that set. The second question then is, would this group actively consider a built-in function which takes a target function to test as its first argument and an array of objects that are considered safe for that target function to work with, and returns true if the target function has no side effects besides directly impacting the objects in the array? (No, I don't know what to call the built-in function. Maybe Function.isPureWithinScope(func, safeObjectsArray).) Alex Vincent Hayward, CA, U.S.A. [1] https://github.com/ajvincent/es7-membrane/issues/141 [2] https://esdiscuss.org/topic/pure-functions-in-ecmascript -- "The first step in confirming there is a bug in someone else's work is confirming there are no bugs in your own." -- Alexander J. Vincent, June 30, 2001
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