Symbol.for accepting string

[fedeci]

Hi folks! According to the ECMA specification Symbol.for() should only accept a string as a key. However when running the following in the node shell it correctly creates a Symbol and it works nice for an array key. Am I missing something about the stability for non-string keys?

Welcome to Node.js v18.3.0.
Type ".help" for more information.
> function a() { console.log("a") }
undefined
> const b = Symbol.for([a, 'foo'])
undefined
> const c = Symbol.for([a, 'foo'])
undefined
> b === c
true
> 

[Trott]

The first step in the algorithm in the spec section you link to is to convert key to a string value.

1. Let stringKey be ? ToString(key).

Symbol.for() is implemented in V8, not in Node.js code. So, if there was a bug, it needs to be opened against V8.

That said, this does not appear to be a bug. The Firefox REPL exhibits the same behavior. So does the Chrome REPL. And the spec seems to indicate that key should be converted to a string.