Object key type should be forced to be a string (index signature parameter)

[rosenbergd]

Bug Report

🔎 Search Terms

Object key type, index signature parameter type

🕗 Version & Regression Information

• This is the behavior in every version I tried, and I believe it should act differently

⏯ Playground Link

Playground link with relevant code

💻 Code

const a: {[prop: number]: number} = {};

a[1] = 123;

for (const i in a) {
    console.log(a, a[i], typeof i);
}

🙁 Actual behavior

I'm allowed to set the prop key to type number, but it is actually a string when tested

🙂 Expected behavior

It should not allow me to use number as the type for the key properties as it automatically converts to string anyways which could create confusion

[MartinJohns]

This is intentional and has been the behavior for... ever? Changing this would be a massive breaking change.

[rosenbergd]

I'm aware that this has been the way it was forever, hence:

This is the behavior in every version I tried, and I believe it should act differently

I understand this will be a breaking change, I don't expect this to be changed in a minor version bump, but it's a dangerous design decision since it sets the wrong expectation for the type of the properties, especially in a language where types are supposed to be more controllable.

I can see that looping through the properties shows the property as a string and trying to compare using === will indicate that it will never match since it's a string, but something like + can cause unexpected bugs and there are other situations where this might cause potentially difficult to find bugs.

[jcalz]

Sure, but it's not a bug. It's a design decision you don't agree with. You might consider changing this from a bug report to a feature suggestion. Perhaps #43041 is close to what you're asking for, and also see #32047.

[RyanCavanaugh]

I don't understand what's being suggested here. Where specifically do you want an error, or do you just disagree with the existence of numeric index signatures in general?

[rosenbergd]

I disagree with the ability to set index type to number for an object type when in reality, once the type of the index is checked, it's actually a string. Since that's the behaviour of JS, I don't expect TS to make number indexes on object types a possibility, so I think it would make more sense to set expectations correctly and not allow the code sample I gave to work (since it's actually a lie).

const a: {[prop: number]: number} = {};

a[1] = 123;

for (const i in a) {
    console.log(a, a[i], typeof i);
}

The output of the console.log is:

{
  "1": 123
},  123,  "string"

[rosenbergd]

I'll change this to a feature request, should I edit the original post, add a new comment or completely start a new issue or remove this and just upvote issue #43041?

[RyanCavanaugh]

This is the intended behavior. Numeric index signatures mean that when you index an object by a key (which, yes, are always strings) which was produced from the coercion of a number, a particular property type is produced. It doesn't imply that a different storage format is being used at runtime.

We are not accepting feature requests to remove language constructs.

[rosenbergd]

That's great in theory, but due to the way types work in the rest of the language, it isn't immediately obvious. There's also this:
keyof typeof a which returns a number type (which makes sense when considering you have to use a number type for the index, but since the index itself becomes a string, it gives the wrong impression).

It would be nicer to have a more concise way to specify a type as a string representation of a number which would make it more understandable than specifying the type as a number when it's a string and it would probably give people that are looking for such a feature a bit more control and consistency.

I was aware of this for a while, but I've seen people make this mistake and it's easy to understand why, it's simply not concise enough.

This would also be a great way to allow this:

const a: {[prop: number]: number} = {};

a[1] = 123;
a['2'] = 321; // this currently doesn't work

[RyanCavanaugh]

The type system is largely constructed of such artificial distinctions - at runtime there's no difference between an empty string[] and and empty number[], yet the type semantics of them are different. We need some concept of a numeric key to meaningfully describe how arrays work, which is numeric index signatures.

keyof typeof a is a fully-consistent description of what types x may have for the expression a[x].

[rosenbergd]

I'm well aware that at runtime the types don't truly matter since you could save whatever type you want into whatever variable. The point remains that number is not a fitting type for this and a better type might need to be created to address this.

Some kind of numeric string type should be created or at least a type that can represent this in a more accurate way.

[typescript-bot]

This issue has been marked 'Working as Intended' and has seen no recent activity. It has been automatically closed for house-keeping purposes.