.contains, .startsWith, and .endsWith

Intro

ECMAScript 5 brought some much needed attention to the Array and Object Objects so it's nice to see String get some focus with ECMAScript 6.

There are 3 String instance methods that caught my eye this evening: .contains, .startsWith, and .endsWith.

Earlier this evening I had the following exchange on Twitter.

@cgcardona:

Javascript Devs—in #Firefox check out: 'carlos'.contains('los'); 'carlos'.startsWith('car'); 'carlos'.endsWith('los'); Harmony

@oscargodson

why not indexOf?

@cgcardona

Just because I was showing 3 methods that are coming in ES6 and indexOf is old school.

@oscargodson

yea but what's the benefit other than "its cool"? Contains is equal to -1, and startsWith is 0 and endsWith is str.length, right?

@oscargodson

is it faster? More peformant?

Good point

That's a totally valid point which got me thinking—is it worth the overhead of adding 3 new methods in order to get the added semantic clarity?

After all as we show below the functionlity of .contains, .startsWith, and .endsWith can all be achieved using .indexOf.

Pros

Traditionally one of Javascript's strengths has been it's lightweight standard library. As Douglas Crockford famously says Javascript is the one language that no one feels that they need to learn before they dive in and start programming.

And for the most part it's true—Javascript and HTML are pretty forgiving. But it's clear to everyone involved that Javascript has grown up and now is expected to do some relatively heavy lifting.

As such the standard library can seem small and advanced functionality can be hidden behind cryptic method names like .indexOf.

The Pro would be beginning to expose more functionlity of the language through meaningful names with the side effect of fleshing out the standard library.

Cons

The Con would be abandoning Javascript's traditionally lightweight standard library. Adding more methods means adding overhead to any developer hoping to pick up the language. This can all be mitigated to some degree with good documentation and a community of developers both of which Javascript thankfully has.

Code

Based on the Twitter conversation I decided to see how easy it would be to write ECMAScript 6's proposed .contains, .startsWith, and .endsWith methods using good ole .indexOf.

.contains

'carlos'.contains('car');
// true
'carlos'.indexOf('car') >= 0;
// true

.startsWith

'carlos'.startsWith('car');
// true
'carlos'.indexOf('car') === 0;
// true

.endsWith

This one looks a little dirty to me because I needed to know the fname and arg in advance. It would be best to wrap it in some type of function.

'carlos'.endsWith('los');
// true
var fname = 'carlos';
var arg = 'los';
fname.indexOf(arg) == fname.length - arg.length;
// true

Oscar Godson recommended the following on this gist:

String.prototype.endsWith = function (suffix) {
  return this.indexOf(suffix, this.length - suffix.length) !== -1;
};

Summary

My personal opinion is that it is a good thing to add these methods even though the functionality is already available with .indexOf.

My thoughts are that the Pros outweigh the cons in the sense of the only con I see being extending the standard library at the expense of making it harder for newcomers to grasp the full language.

But I would argue that the language is actually helped by having methods which are self documenting by their names.

As a new Javascript developer comes on the scene they can use .endsWith when that is what they mean.

Write what you think

This all plays into why I enjoy writing Ruby and why I think Coffeescript is a pleasant abstraction on top of Javascript. I want my programs to read like my thoughts.

If the method names sound or read like what I'm trying to accomplish then all the better. And I think that's what high level languages are all about.

Published

Tags

• javascript 12
• code 21