Replace (most of) DOMString/ByteString/USVString/CSSOMString with just String?

[foolip]

DOMString, ByteString and USVString are defined by Web IDL as strings with varying restrictions, while CSSOMString is defined as either DOMString or USVString, to allow for implementations that use either UTF-8 or UTF-16 internally.

From the perspective of JavaScript and web developers, there are just strings:

DOMString is just a String by another name.

ByteString has the additional requirement that no code point is larger than 255 and is used mainly for HTTP headers. The following throws a TypeError because of this:

const h = new Headers();
h.append('something', '\u0100'); // "String contains non ISO-8859-1 code point" error in Chrome

USVString has the additional requirement that there are no lone surrogates, and is used a lot for URLs. Lone surrogates are replaced with U+FFFD in APIs that accept USVString.

CSSOMString is just a type alias, so it might behave like USVString, or it might not.

These distinctions rarely matter, and I'm proposing that MDN simply talks about strings in most cases.

Aside: There's an unfortunate number of references to "DOMString objects", "USVString object", etc. There aren't objects, they're strings :)

[sideshowbarker]

Replace (most of) DOMString/ByteString/USVString/CSSOMString with just String?
These distinctions rarely matter, and I'm proposing that MDN simply talks about strings in most cases.

Big +1 👍 I strongly support making this change.

[teoli2003]

+1 too! I even opened #5614 a few weeks ago.

(For ByteString we should make sure the TypeError is listed and explained)

[foolip]

Awesome, I'm glad I'm not the only one who gotten hung up on this :)