console: console.table doesn't fall back to just logging when given a function

[ohbarye]

• Version: v10.1.0
• Platform: macOS X
• Subsystem: console

This is a question. (And I admit it's a kind of nitpicking).

Current Behavior

According to the console.table document, it reads that it "falls back to just logging the argument if it can’t be parsed as tabular."

But it doesn't fall back when I give a function as its first argument. It logs an empty table.

$ node

> const f = function() {}
> console.table(f)
┌─────────┐
│ (index) │
├─────────┤
└─────────┘

$ node

> class Test {}
> console.table(Test)
┌─────────┐
│ (index) │
├─────────┤
└─────────┘

I guess that's because the following line allows a function to proceed the consequent steps.

node/lib/console.js

Line 329 in 5096e24

(typeof tabularData !== 'object' && typeof tabularData !== 'function'))

Question

Is this intentional behavior?

If it's better to change this behavior, I would be glad to send a patch for that.

[devsnek]

i think it'd be fine to change it

[Trott]

I think this was intentional behavior. It's what Chrome does and it fits my interpretation of the spec. However, Firefox does it differently and the spec for console.table() is just a few sentences long so not very detailed.

Do note that it's possible to attach properties to a function and that our current implementation deals with that well:

$ ./node
> foo = function () {}
[Function: foo]
> foo.bar = 'hey'
'hey'
> console.table(foo)
┌─────────┬────────┐
│ (index) │ Values │
├─────────┼────────┤
│   bar   │ 'hey'  │
└─────────┴────────┘
undefined
>