microsoft / microsoft/TypeScript

Enumerating an enum: Wrong thing is allowed and right thing is not with with noImplicityAny

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Description

Consider this code:

enum Test1 {
One = 1,
Two = 2
}
enum Test2 {
One = "one",
Two = 2
}
enum Test3 {
One = "one",
Two = "two"
}
for (const key in Test1) {
const aValue = Test1[key];
console.log(aValue);
}

This code compiles but because in an enum a reverse value->key map is also set up for numeric values, the outcome is not what one would expect: 1, 2. It's: One, Two, 1, 2 instead. Similarly, replacing Test1 with Test2 in the for..in loop compiles but gives unexpected result: "Two", "one", 2. However, with Test3, for which the result would've been correct: "one", "two", there's a compile error with the noImplicitAny compiler option:

Element implicitly has an 'any' type because expression of type 'string' can't be used to index type 'typeof Test3'.
No index signature with a parameter of type 'string' was found on type 'typeof Test3'.

This seems backwards of what the behavior should be: With Test1 and Test2, the compile should fail and it should succeed with Test3. If not that, the compile should either fail or succeed with all 3. FYI, the reason I noticed this was because converting an all numeric enum to all string enum caused compile failure for some other code that was using "for..in" which originally had a logical flaw which the compiler didn't catch but it's flagging it now when the logical flaw has (inadvertently) been fixed.

It seems like there are at least a couple of independent problems here.

  1. With enums that have at least one numeric member (Test1 and Test2), the inferred type of loop variable (key) should ideally be the union of all keys and numeric values or at least string | number, not just string.

  2. Indexing enums by a string (that cannot be narrowed down specific literals representing keys of an enum) should consistently return any. It may acceptable to return union type of all possible values: number for Test1, string|number for Test2 and string for Test3 and not string for Test1 and Test2 and any for Test3.

  3. In addition to the issues above, a for..in over an enum should somehow be flagged and fail to compile regardless of noImplicitAny flag because it only yields the expected result in the enum has all string values but even with all string-enums, that would be fragile as adding a single numeric value to the enum will cause compile failures at that point. It should just not be allowed at least by default.

Issue #18409 seems related but not quite the same.

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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the Test1, Test2, and Test3 snippets with noImplicitAny enabled and compare their enum reverse mappings, for-in results, and indexing errors. Then trace the compiler's enum indexing and for-in type inference; done means the issue's chosen behavior is specified and applied consistently, including whether enum iteration should be rejected.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
typescript
Domain
compilers
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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