Must can't handle ES6 (symbols)

[radekn]

Using Must in Node.js 5.3, the following code:

demand(Symbol("Hi there!")).be.undefined()

correctly throws, but the error message is highly confusing:

AssertionError: undefined must be undefined

Seems like Must uses a custom formatter for displaying values in situations like this, and it doesn't account for the possibility of encountering an object of a type unknown to it.

It should be fairly easy to at least add a fallback to String(value) for such cases in order to have forward compatibility. What do you think?

[moll]

Hey! Thanks for the catch! You're absolutely right. I fixed this quickly in a helper function (3fb59ad), but see stringifying in general could use a little refactoring.

Please give that commit a try and if you give it a green light, I'll release a new patch bump with it. ;) Thanks!

[radekn]

Thanks, I just tried that commit and it works fine for me, so I'm closing the issue.

BTW, I really like the library. I migrated my hobby project from Chai to Must just a few days ago - I started looking for alternatives precisely because of the inconsistency of chai/should API (with regards to asserting on access vs call), and it's nice to know I'm not the only one seeing a problem there. As for Must, It can sometimes be a little rough on the edges, but shows great promise and it's already very usable. Keep up the good work :)

[radekn]

Oh wait, I closed it too soon. Seems like there are still cases where symbols are reported as null, e.g. when testing arrays containing them for equivalence. This code:

demand([Symbol("hello!")]).be.eql([Symbol("bye!")])

throws with the following message:

AssertionError: [null] must be equivalent to [null]

[moll]

Ah, you stumbled upon exactly the case I hinted at with refactoring. :-) Thanks. I'll do that then after dinner today. ;-)

Thanks for the love, too. Mind sharing what rough edges you noticed that I could perhaps get at with the same stick? :)

[moll]

Refactored stringifying to stringify both Symbols and also RegExps in nested objects. Please give it a try now and let me know. Thanks!

[moll]

While I was there, I threw in Must.prototype.symbol. If you have ideas of other matchers you'd like to see, do share. ;)

[radekn]

Hi there, and sorry for late reply. I tried the latest commit, and it works for the above cases, but now I discovered another one where it doesn't. When I use a permutationOf matcher, it always fails with the following stack trace:

TypeError: Cannot convert a Symbol value to a string
      at Array.sort (native)
      at isPermutationOf (node_modules/must/must.js:614:27)
      at Must.permutationOf (node_modules/must/must.js:606:12)

Edit: I think the problem with permutationOf is not exclusive to Symbols, so I opened a new issue: #38.