Ecmascript, Ecmascript

The language is widely used on the web, and is often confused with JavaScript or JScript , the two major dialects from which ECMAScript was standardized.

Both JavaScript and JScript aim to be compatible with ECMAScript, while providing additional features not described in the ECMA specification.

Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, is on record as saying that "ECMAScript was always an unwanted trade name that sounds like a skin disease." es4-discuss: Will there be a suggested file suffix for es4.

Several of the dynamic features of ECMAScript (such as the "eval" function) are made optional, thus allowing the runtime to make more assumptions about the behaviour of programs and therefore make more performance trade-offs when running the code. The HD DVD standard is one place where the ECMAScript Compact Profile is used in favour of full ECMAScript in order to reduce processing and memory requirements on a device.

Dialects typically include their own, different standard libraries, of which some are standardized separately such as the W3C-specified DOM. This means that applications written in one dialect of ECMAScript will not likely work in another, unless they are designed to be compatible.

It remains to be seen if ActionScript will stay in sync with future changes to the ECMAScript specifications.

Packages, namespaces and early binding from ECMAScript 4 are no longer included for planned releases. In addition, other goals and ideas from ECMAScript 4 are being rephrased to keep consensus in the committee; these include a notion of classes based on existing ECMAScript 3 concepts combined with proposed ECMAScript 3.1 extensions.

Depending on how ECMAScript 3.1 is officially named, ECMAScript Harmony may end up being the new ECMAScript 4th edition.

Source: Wikipedia > Ecmascript