Annotated ECMAScript 5.1

‟Ex igne vita”

Annex E (informative) Additions and Changes in the 5th Edition that Introduce Incompatibilities with the 3rd Edition #

7.1: Unicode format control characters are no longer stripped from ECMAScript source text before processing. In Edition 5, if such a character appears in a StringLiteral or RegularExpressionLiteral the character will be incorporated into the literal where in Edition 3 the character would not be incorporated into the literal.

7.2: Unicode character <BOM> is now treated as whitespace and its presence in the middle of what appears to be an identifier could result in a syntax error which would not have occurred in Edition 3

7.3: Line terminator characters that are preceded by an escape sequence are now allowed within a string literal token. In Edition 3 a syntax error would have been produced.

7.8.5: Regular expression literals now return a unique object each time the literal is evaluated. This change is detectable by any programs that test the object identity of such literal values or that are sensitive to the shared side effects.

7.8.5: Edition 5 requires early reporting of any possible RegExp constructor errors that would be produced when converting a RegularExpressionLiteral to a RegExp object. Prior to Edition 5 implementations were permitted to defer the reporting of such errors until the actual execution time creation of the object.

7.8.5: In Edition 5 unescaped “/” characters may appear as a CharacterClass in a regular expression literal. In Edition 3 such a character would have been interpreted as the final character of the literal.

10.4.2: In Edition 5, indirect calls to the eval function use the global environment as both the variable environment and lexical environment for the eval code. In Edition 3, the variable and lexical environments of the caller of an indirect eval was used as the environments for the eval code.

15.4.4: In Edition 5 all methods of Array.prototype are intentionally generic. In Edition 3 toString and toLocaleString were not generic and would throw a TypeError exception if applied to objects that were not instances of Array.

10.6: In Edition 5 the array indexed properties of argument objects that correspond to actual formal parameters are enumerable. In Edition 3, such properties were not enumerable.

10.6: In Edition 5 the value of the [[Class]] internal property of an arguments object is "Arguments". In Edition 3, it was "Object". This is observable if toString is called as a method of an arguments object.

12.6.4: for-in statements no longer throw a TypeError if the in expression evaluates to null or undefined. Instead, the statement behaves as if the value of the expression was an object with no enumerable properties.

15: In Edition 5, the following new properties are defined on built-in objects that exist in Edition 3: Object.getPrototypeOf, Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor, Object.getOwnPropertyNames, Object.create, Object.defineProperty, Object.defineProperties, Object.seal, Object.freeze, Object.preventExtensions, Object.isSealed, Object.isFrozen, Object.isExtensible, Object.keys, Function.prototype.bind, Array.prototype.indexOf, Array.prototype.lastIndexOf, Array.prototype.every, Array.prototype.some, Array.prototype.forEach, Array.prototype.map, Array.prototype.filter, Array.prototype.reduce, Array.prototype.reduceRight, String.prototype.trim, Date.now, Date.prototype.toISOString, Date.prototype.toJSON.

15: Implementations are now required to ignore extra arguments to standard built-in methods unless otherwise explicitly specified. In Edition 3 the handling of extra arguments was unspecified and implementations were explicitly allowed to throw a TypeError exception.

15.1.1: The value properties NaN, Infinity, and undefined of the Global Object have been changed to be read-only properties.

15.1.2.1. Implementations are no longer permitted to restrict the use of eval in ways that are not a direct call. In addition, any invocation of eval that is not a direct call uses the global environment as its variable environment rather than the caller’s variable environment.

15.1.2.2: The specification of the function parseInt no longer allows implementations to treat Strings beginning with a 0 character as octal values.

15.3.4.3: In Edition 3, a TypeError is thrown if the second argument passed to Function.prototype.apply is neither an array object nor an arguments object. In Edition 5, the second argument may be any kind of generic array-like object that has a valid length property.

15.3.4.315.3.4.4: In Edition 3 passing undefined or null as the first argument to either Function.prototype.apply or Function.prototype.call causes the global object to be passed to the indirectly invoked target function as the this value. If the first argument is a primitive value the result of calling ToObject on the primitive value is passed as the this value. In Edition 5, these transformations are not performed and the actual first argument value is passed as the this value. This difference will normally be unobservable to existing ECMAScript Edition 3 code because a corresponding transformation takes place upon activation of the target function. However, depending upon the implementation, this difference may be observable by host object functions called using apply or call. In addition, invoking a standard built-in function in this manner with null or undefined passed as the this value will in many cases cause behaviour in Edition 5 implementations that differ from Edition 3 behaviour. In particular, in Edition 5 built-in functions that are specified to actually use the passed this value as an object typically throw a TypeError exception if passed null or undefined as the this value.

15.3.5.2: In Edition 5, the prototype property of Function instances is not enumerable. In Edition 3, this property was enumerable.

15.5.5.2: In Edition 5, the individual characters of a String object’s [[PrimitiveValue] may be accessed as array indexed properties of the String object. These properties are non-writable and non-configurable and shadow any inherited properties with the same names. In Edition 3, these properties did not exist and ECMAScript code could dynamically add and remove writable properties with such names and could access inherited properties with such names.

15.9.4.2: Date.parse is now required to first attempt to parse its argument as an ISO format string. Programs that use this format but depended upon implementation specific behaviour (including failure) may behave differently.

15.10.2.12: In Edition 5, \s now additionally matches <BOM>.

15.10.4.1: In Edition 3, the exact form of the String value of the source property of an object created by the RegExp constructor is implementation defined. In Edition 5, the String must conform to certain specified requirements and hence may be different from that produced by an Edition 3 implementation.

15.10.6.4: In Edition 3, the result of RegExp.prototype.toString need not be derived from the value of the RegExp object’s source property. In Edition 5 the result must be derived from the source property in a specified manner and hence may be different from the result produced by an Edition 3 implementation.

15.11.2.1, 15.11.4.3: In Edition 5, if an initial value for the message property of an Error object is not specified via the Error constructor the initial value of the property is the empty String. In Edition 3, such an initial value is implementation defined.

15.11.4.4: In Edition 3, the result of Error.prototype.toString is implementation defined. In Edition 5, the result is fully specified and hence may differ from some Edition 3 implementations.

15.12: In Edition 5, the name JSON is defined in the global environment. In Edition 3, testing for the presence of that name will show it to be undefined unless it is defined by the program or implementation.