Don’t write to global functions
Bad:
Array.prototype.diff = function diff(comparisonArray) {
const hash = new Set(comparisonArray);
return this.filter(elem => !hash.has(elem));
};
Good:
class SuperArray extends Array {
diff(comparisonArray) {
const hash = new Set(comparisonArray);
return this.filter(elem => !hash.has(elem));
}
}
Polluting globals is a bad practice in JavaScript because you could clash with another
library and the user of your API would be none-the-wiser until they get an
exception in production. Let’s think about an example: what if you wanted to
extend JavaScript’s native Array method to have a diff
method that could
show the difference between two arrays? You could write your new function
to the Array.prototype
, but it could clash with another library that tried
to do the same thing. What if that other library was just using diff
to find
the difference between the first and last elements of an array? This is why it
would be much better to just use ES2015/ES6 classes and simply extend the Array
global.