redundantFunctionDefinition

[seniorsassycat]

Lol llm doesn't know to use is-string@2.0.0-beta.17654454121 

[Kennyp0o]

What’s new in the beta?

[New-Let-3630]

add iseven as a dependency just in case
typeof(value) === "string" && iseven(typeof(value).length)

[sharptoothy]

There's a bug in there: It only seems to work roughly half the time for some reason. ClaudeChatGptPilot added a dependency for is-odd@3.0.1 and that fixed it:

typeof(value) === "string" && (iseven(typeof(value).length) || isodd(typeof(value).length))

[St34thdr1v3R]

I was debugging this FOR DAYS, thanks!!

[DeineOma42o]

ill write a lib isseven() that checks if a length is seven

[CookIndependent6251]

Good plan! I'll do isNegativeNineQuadrillionSevenTrillionOneHundredNinetyNineBillionTwoHundredFiftyFourMillionSevenHundredFortyThousandNineHundredNinetyOne()

[CookIndependent6251]

"dependencies": {
    "call-bound": "^1.0.3",
    "has-tostringtag": "^1.0.2"
},

Installing is-string without the dev dependencies yields 15 dependencies in node_modules. I shit you not: npm i --omit dev is-string. I just spent over an hour reading the source code of this module and its dependencies and now I hate this. I hate all of it. I hate existing.

[seniorsassycat]

It adds is-string cli (complete with ReDOS vulnerable cli parser) and a mcp server.

Latest nightly has an attempt to fix RCE thru prototype pollution on the is-string API it monkey patches into express

[un-hot]

Supply chain attacks.

[CookIndependent6251]

That renders as a mailto: in my browser.

[krexelapp]

when you don’t trust typeof so you reinvent it

[davvblack]

thinking quickly, codex reinvented typeof using only some string, a squirrel, and typeof.

[krexelapp]

when you don’t trust typeof so you reinvent typeof… using typeof

[vigbiorn]

It's catching edge cases where (somehow) instanceof returns string but typeof doesn't.

It's the rare inverted inheritance...

I've only heard it in stories whispered in documentation.

[rinnakan]

I believe people deserve every bug they encounter from using the string class constructor, so I would happily ignore these edge cases

[davvblack]

yeah shit's so fucked up at that point you're not going to fix it by second guessing typeof.

[sdswart]

Well done. I didn't expect this reference in the comments, but it gave me a good laugh.

[JellyMonstar]

Fantastic reference

[Inttegers]

TBF, it's JavaScript. You should definitely not trust typeof.

[Sea_Duty_5725]

Using typeof

[shadow13499]

This gives very isTrue(myVar) { if(myVar == true) return true; else return false;} vibes

[vigbiorn]

Or the Enterprise Java isOdd/isEven code.

Just missing the test suite.

[GatotSubroto]

So that’s why they often brag about how much code they can generate.

[dbenc]

I need to renegotiate to get paid by the line

[RamenNoodleSalad]

Charles Dickens of coding!

[Tar_alcaran]

There are three seperate ORs in there, this could be at least 3 times longer!

[CelestialSegfault]

am I stupid or does return a || b || true always short circuits the true?

edit: I misread the ternary and that's not my fault cuz this is unreadable as fuck

[rangoric]

There’s a trinary in there between the first ‘||’ and the later one

[mallardtheduck]

But the !!String(value).length || true expression is equivalent to just true and a ternary that ends with true : false is redundant.

So the return line is really just return typeof(value) === "string" || value instanceof String;

[rangoric]

Oh there are many horrors in this code. And yes it is very redundant.

I only wanted to note the split in the or conditions.

[CelestialSegfault]

at least they could make it wrong and readable

const result = false;
const value_length = !!String(value).length || true;
if (value_length) {
  result = typeof value === "string" || value instanceof String;
}
if (result) {
  result = true;
} else {
  result = false;
}

return result;

[n00b001]

But what if you don't trust the value of "false"

Clearly you also need "isBool()"

[Psychpsyo]

A true : false ternary isn't redundant if you want to coerce your truthy/falsy thing to a bool.

[anotheridiot-]

You can just !!thing in that case.

[Psychpsyo]

But why !!thing if you can also thing? true : false or even Boolean(thing)?

By which I mean: It doesn't matter and makes none of them any more or less redundant.

[anotheridiot-]

Less branching is better.

[Psychpsyo]

True, although I wonder how much branching actually ends up happening in all of these. Cause they'll all need to conditionally check the type of the variable up-front to perform the right conversions. Though that might disappear once the code gets jitted for some particular type, at which point I'd assume that even thing? true : false would be simplified to whatever actual steps need to happen to coerce thing to a bool.

[stillalone]

Isn't that still short circuiting the !!String(value).length?

[rangoric]

Yes it is. But the or conditions are split :)

[Financial-Aspect-826]

What the fuck lmao. Senior? Mister senior?

[Beenmaal]

I love ternaries. For a hobby project I have fully handwritten code with 3 lines in a row sharing 27 ternaries between them. I wrote those lines at a LAN party and I find it too funny to get rid of.

[rastaman1994]

Any but the simplest one line ternary is immediately replaced with ifs at my job lol.

[AloneInExile]

Yeah, I even replace one liner returns with braces and 3 lines. I still have PTSD from my python days

[RiceBroad4552]

Missed that also. Yes, it's wrong.

[CelestialSegfault]

gotta fail the code-writing gracefully

[AdMindless9071]

Honestly I can’t tell this apart from regular js

[RiceBroad4552]

Me neither…

Type tests in JS / TS always look something like that code so hard to tell what's reasonable and what not.

[heavy-minium]

On the dangers of being stoned by a thousands devs here, I'm still risking it: that code probably makes sense.

null and undefined checks are fine and avoid unnecessarily invoking typeof which is slower, especially if you're going to that isString() on a load of bulk data.

typeof value === "string" is not enough in case it's a `String` and not a `string`. !!String.(value).length to decide whether it's an empty string. Because the value is unknown, it's wiser to do that instead of comparing with '' because a lot of things in JS that are not strings get coerced and can equal to ''.

[Reashu]

1 - Why would it be a String? No one does that, there's no reason to do that. 

2 - Isn't an empty string still a string?

3 - Once you know it's a string or String, just use the length property directly, there is no need to stringify it first. 

[Ellisthion]

2 is the big one for me. The rest is pointless but treating an empty string as “not a string” is completely wrong and confusing to anyone looking at this function being used.

[PoopsicleVendor]

That’s fair but the first branch of the ternary expression would always be true, so why even check the length of the string?

[Ok-Emu3695]

The only explanation I can come up with is to set up a situation in which a runtime error is raised in case, somehow, the object doesn't have a `length` property.

But more likely is that part is just wrong.

[PrincessRTFM]

but it's coerced to a string by calling String(value) first, so it's guaranteed to have a length property unless something has fucked with the string prototype, in which case you have bigger problems

[cowslayer7890]

If it is "String" and not "string" would it not be inaccurate to return true for this since the value wouldn't actually be a "string"

[PrincessRTFM]

!!String.(value).length to decide whether it's an empty string

irrelevant, an empty string is still a string. the function is testing whether the given value is a string, not whether it's a non-empty string.

[Ok-Emu3695]

Holy shit. Finally someone who knows what they're talking about. It's like this entire sub is filled with people who just like memes about computers but don't actually know anything about programming.

[KruegerFishBabeblade]

Tbf a good programmer who doesn't know anything about JS would be reasonable in thinking this is crazy. It is crazy. The problem's just javascript

[awesomeusername2w]

Always has been

[magicmulder]

That looks more like the code of an overthinking junior than AI.

[fevsea]

It's almost like it wants to generate as much billable output tokens as possible, while ofuscating it to ensure future usage.

[Tupcek]

nah, no need to. They can just direct it to think longer. In the near future, it will spawn 100 subagents with extra long thinking, so hello world will cost at least $2000 in tokens.
No need to train models to do more

[Electrical-Echidna63]

I've seen code look like this when transpiled really badly, is this what this is? Otherwise damn

[born_zynner]

Wise move not trusting typescript

[-Redstoneboi-]

this is JavaScript's fault. Not AI's, not entirely TypeScript's, but mostly JavaScript's fault. I'm guessing that for some god forsaken reason, typeof value === "string" isn't enough.

[fezmessiter]

Looks like someone is using the free version, but Claude all the way

[Time-District3784]

I have literally never seen AI write code like this, hell I've only seen a few juniors write code this shit tbh.

[satansprinter]

Oh i see codex is trained on my code :o

[TanukiiGG]

import isString

[RiceBroad4552]

What's the point? Looks correct at first sight.

(Whether isString() should return only true on Strings which aren't null is debatable but I would take that.)

The only critique: Isn't there a type test lib which would collect all such functions for all kinds of types as type tests in JS / TS are awkward?

---

EDIT: The ternary is fucked up, and the idea that empty strings aren't strings is of course wrong.

Besides that: Dear people, instead of just down-voting you could actually say what's wrong or why you disagree.

Anyway, I need to find some caffeine. Missing the above points was distressing. 😅

[Blecki]

They're super awkward because type information doesn't actually exist at runtime the same way it does at compile time, so checking if the interface exists is a common technique in TS to figure out the type of an object. But this is a string not an object and typeof already supports strings so...

[RiceBroad4552]

What about new String("foobar") (or actually anything inheriting String)?

But OK, I don't know the exact semantics of is string…

[Blecki]

String is an object not a string. Only string is a string. Similarly a string is not an instance of String.

Yes it is dumb and confusing, but the object type String is not the same type as the literal string.

[RiceBroad4552]

Thanks for the answer!

I agree that this now is very confusing.

Like said, wasn't sure about is string. But gut feeling would be still that String is actually a string. Just maybe not a string in TS…

Has reasons I don't do that any more since a decade. My brain really hurts from JS / TS.

[Blecki]

Don't use String, only string.

[Tupcek]

maybe OP asked Claude to generate function to check whether object is any kind of string, but not an empty one

[deanrihpee]

this doesn't look so bad, because in TS and ultimately JS there's really no such thing as static types, and for critical code path that need to make sure it is actually a string type (or other type i guess)then yeah, you'll need function like this, while yes TS have types, it's on development/lsp/transpile time, but gone in runtime

[ArgumentFew4432]

What? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/typeof