microsoft / microsoft/TypeScript

Preserve radix when pretty-printing numeric literal types

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Awaiting More Feedback Domain: Declaration Emit Domain: LS: Type Display Suggestion
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Description

Suggestion

🔍 Search Terms

numeric literal radix, non-decimal numeric literal types

List of keywords you searched for before creating this issue. Write them down here so that others can find this suggestion more easily and help provide feedback.

✅ Viability 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, new syntax sugar for JS, etc.)
  • This feature would agree with the rest of TypeScript's Design Goals.

⭐ Suggestion

If a numeric literal type was defined explicitly with a non-decimal literal, it should be displayed as such in editor hovers and other places where it is pretty-printed.

📃 Motivating Example

Often, non-decimal literals are more-or-less self-documenting in a context:

declare const MASK: 0b1011; // it is obvious which bits are set
// vs
declare const MASK: 11; // wat?
declare const PERMISSIONS: 0o777; // unix file system permissions
// vs
declare const PERMISSIONS: 511; // wat?
declare const ARGB: 0x00ffff00; // yellow pixel color
// vs
declare const ARGB: 16776960; // wat?
declare const ASCII_CODE: 0x1b; // ASCII code for backspace
// vs
declare const ASCII_CODE: 27; // wat?

Ideally, the radix should carry over to the "autoincremented" enum members:

enum AsciiLetters {
  A = 0x61, B, C, D, E, F,  /* ... */, Z,
}
// AsciiLetters.E: 0x65

💻 Use Cases

Bit masks. Unix file system permissions. RGB colors. Hexadecimal ASCII/Unicode code points.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  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 tracing TypeScript's pretty-printing path for numeric literal types and the handling of auto-incremented enum members; the issue does not name specific files or tests. Done means editor hovers and other pretty-printed output preserve explicitly written binary, octal, or hexadecimal radices, including the illustrated enum case.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
typescript
Domain
compilers
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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