As per the links I shared, there are cases where a piece of code requires a collection of 1-or-more values. Even ES has defined methods with that requirement (reduce). Perhaps some DOM or Web API requires one? (I tried searching, but couldn't find an example)
I'm aware a.length > 0 is enough, but the point is to not have to check every-time, but to "rest assured" that the list won't be empty at any point in the program. For further reference about the general concept, see:
However, I can't come up with a "compelling enough" argument in favor of this specific class. I'm afraid this is one of those "greater than the sum of its parts" situation:
- Doing something on the ES side won't be useful enough to justify the complexity cost.
- Doing something on the TS side alone won't yield satisfying results.
- If there was some sort of "collaboration" between ES & TS (or if ES defined a static type-system), there could be enough reasons to justify the addition.
Yes! (but the idea could be extended to other collections, such as Set) I've been thinking more, then thought "What's the point of forbidding sparsity if the array can still contain undefined?" So I think it'll be more useful if inserting undefined throws. We could also forbid null, but that may be too extreme.
If this happens, it'd make more sense if the N.E.A. API was similar to that of Map, which would make it easier to poly-fill (no need for Proxy). But if length -> size, then it would no longer be "array-like" :( . That may need to happen anyway, as an N.E.A. could have no hard-coded theoretical limit, which would require size to be a BigInt
That's what I meant! I assumed the array can't contain undefined, so the only way to return it is if there's 1 element.
Yep, I agree. An alternative would be to add toPopped and toShifted, which would shallow-clone the array, potentially returning a classic array.