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Mangling interface bindings to indicate identifier type #61710
Description
Acknowledgement
- I acknowledge that issues using this template may be closed without further explanation at the maintainer's discretion.
Comment
Regarding the following sample code:
import { Product } from "@shared/product.model";
export const engineers: Product[] = [...];
The engineers declaration uses the notation Product[], which is neither intuitive, nor logical, on the following counts:
- It imples that there is an interface definition: interface Product[] {...};
- The notation doesn't accurately reflect the element type of the engineers array, or what the [] applies to.
- Product[] looks like accessor syntax in which someone forgot the index.
The fix for this is to change the notation to:
export const engineers: [Product] = [...];
This correctly reflects the situation without mangling the interface binding and is closer to JS syntax.
Activity
MartinJohns commentedon May 16, 2025
[Product]is already working syntax and means a tuple with exactly one element.You can write
Array<Product>instead, which is very clear if the other syntax confuses you.It really doesn't, because
[]are not valid identifier characters.I mean.. it does. The
[]always applies to the type before. Honestly, if basic syntax (that is fairly common in a lot of languages) is so troublesome to you, you'll likely going to have a bad time. Better learn the syntax and get used to it.snarbles2 commentedon May 16, 2025
This sort of syntax is hardly unique to Typescript. It would look familiar to someone coming from one of many other typed languages.
RyanCavanaugh commentedon May 16, 2025
We can't change the syntax fundamentals of a programming language a dozen years after its creation, sorry.