API Suggestion: Add function for getting syntax kind name from syntax kind

Search Terms

function get SyntaxKind name

Suggestion

A common mistake people will do when using the compiler api is getting the syntax kind name by doing ts.SyntaxKind[kind], where kind is the syntax kind number value (ex. I had this mistake in my presentation at tsconf in ts-ast-viewer, though that's been fixed for a couple years now, I've still seen people do it occasionally).

This is wrong because it will give the last entry in the enum, which could be an alias like LastTypeNode instead of ImportType.

It would be nice to...

1. Add a function... maybe getSyntaxKindName(kind: SyntaxKind): string... that gets the syntax kind name from the provided syntax kind value.
2. Add a doc comment above SyntaxKind to suggest using getSyntaxKindName to get the name.

Examples

ts.getSyntaxKindName(ts.SyntaxKind.ImportType); // "ImportType"

Checklist

My suggestion meets these guidelines:

• This wouldn't be a breaking change in existing TypeScript/JavaScript code
• This wouldn't change the runtime behavior of existing JavaScript code
• This could be implemented without emitting different JS based on the types of the expressions
• This isn't a runtime feature (e.g. library functionality, non-ECMAScript syntax with JavaScript output, etc.)
• This feature would agree with the rest of TypeScript's Design Goals.

Start by locating the exported SyntaxKind declaration and the compiler API entry points that expose enum-related helpers. Trace how aliased enum values are represented, then add coverage for the ImportType example and the requested SyntaxKind documentation; done means the public helper returns the intended name instead of an alias.