Support for converting a NodeJS.Immediate to a number

[fabiospampinato]

What is the problem this feature will solve?

Objects returned by setTimeout and setInterval support being converted to a raw number, for better compatibility with the web I guess, but setImmediate doesn't support the same, which seems an ugly luck a symmetry.

Basically this is a thing for timeouts:

const id = +setTimeout ( () => {} );
clearTimeout ( id );

It is a thing for intervals:

const id = +setInterval ( () => {} );
clearInterval ( id );

But it's not a thing for "immediates" (?):

const id = +setImmediate ( () => {} );
clearImmediate ( id );

What is the feature you are proposing to solve the problem?

Presumably there should be a counter dedicated to immediate callbacks?

What alternatives have you considered?

Implementing this in userland I guess?

[aduh95]

Is it just for aesthetic sake, or do you have an actual use-case in mind?

[fabiospampinato]

@aduh95 my use case is providing setImmediate/clearImmediate functions that work in the browser too, with the same interface, and I don't think I should be returning a "NodeJS.Immediate" object thing in a browser environment. It's easy enough to make up a number in userland though, so the main point about this issue is actually about the ugliness required to do that, imo.

[bnoordhuis]

Doesn't seem objectionable to me and I don't think there are backwards compatibility risks. Pull request welcome, I suppose?