Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.javascript
Subject: Re: I don't get it
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2021 19:08:48 +0100
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

> On 10/04/2021 15:47, Ben Bacarisse wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
>>
>>> On 09/04/2021 20:01, John G Harris wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 10:03:13 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
>>>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>     <snip>
>>>>> After spending two days some years ago I discovered that IE and Firefox
>>>>> differed in their handling of comparisons of numerical and string data,
>>>>> and that something like
>>>>>
>>>>> if('1'== 1)
>>>>>
>>>>> was handled differently in each browser.
>>>>>
>>>>> As with all loosely typed languages, bugs in your code are trumped by
>>>>> bugs in the language itself.
>>>>
>>>> Was that before or after they claimed to conform to ECMA 262? If
>>>> after, one or both browsers had a bug, not the language. If before,
>>>> that's what you get with USPs.
>>>
>>> It was around 2007 give or take. IE6 and XP was current. I coded for
>>> firefox, it broke in IE6.
>>>
>>> I actually checked the language spec. As far as I cam remember the
>>> spec was explicit, that you converted to whatever the target of an
>>> assignement was in a mixed type operation, but in a conditional there
>>> was no assignment type...
>>
>> So you looked in the wrong place.  I don't think that adds much useful
>> information.  ECMA 262, 3rd edition (2000) is very clear about the
>> conversions required by the == operator (section 11.9.1 and 11.9.3).
>> For the record, the string should be converted to a number (and the
>> algorithm for doing that is given in great detail too).
>>
>> So it's not an issue with the specification.  Testing in IE6 running on
>> XP I find that the conversion is done correctly.  Did Mozilla really
>> have such a crude bug, and if so, did you really code for that despite
>> the specification being clear?
>>
> All I know is that IE6 and firefox gave different results and it was
> down to an implicit cast in a conditional statement. The code I have
> now - dated 2008, after fixing -  simply turns everything explicitly
> into a Number()....so I assume that firefox was doing that implicitly
> and IE6 was not.

I've tested it on IE6.  Unless IE6 is a Heisenberg browser, it does the
conversion correctly. 

> You can defend the language all you like - I was past caring.

I'm not defending the language.

> I had a job to do and IE6 and firefox produced completely different
> results on the same web page, because of casting. Forcing everything
> to a number whether it needed it or not fixed the issue.

Maybe is was Mozilla that got it wrong, or maybe you are
mis-remembering?

-- 
Ben.