maybe require('buffer') could show a message

[mh-cbon]

• Version: 6.1.0
• Platform: linux
• Subsystem: fedora

I misread the doc, i did var Buffer = require('buffer'); and could not figure out why this was true Buffer.alloc===undefined.

Maybe node could display a warning message if someone tries to require buffer like i did, or, maybe it could throw an error as if it was not an existing package ?

[bnoordhuis]

Maybe node could display a warning message if someone tries to require buffer like i did

Node has no (reliable) way to determine how the return value of require('buffer') is used.

maybe it could throw an error as if it was not an existing package ?

That would be a breaking change and rather disruptive to the ecosystem, so the chances of that happening are low.

What might be an option is to change lib/buffer.js so that it does:

Buffer.Buffer = Buffer;
Buffer.SlowBuffer = SlowBuffer;
// etc.
module.exports = Buffer;

But personally, I don't think that's much of an improvement.

[ChALkeR]

@mh-cbon Why should it throw? buffer is an existing module, it's documented, and there is no way it's going to throw an error now. Moreover, require('buffer') is the documented way to get buffer.INSPECT_MAX_BYTES: https://nodejs.org/api/buffer.html#buffer_buffer_inspect_max_bytes and buffer.kMaxLength: https://nodejs.org/api/buffer.html#buffer_class_method_buffer_alloc_size_fill_encoding.

[mh-cbon]

:s I see, makes sense, thanks for information.

So i was thinking, maybe that sentence, at the beginning of the doc page about Buffer, is misleading

The Buffer class is a global within Node.js, making it unlikely that one would need to ever use require('buffer').

As require('buffer') is in fact a totally different thing of Buffer.

As a doc reader I d say it should stop right after the coma.

[ChALkeR]

@mh-cbon Perhaps that should look like this instead:

The Buffer class is a global within Node.js, making it unlikely that one would need to ever use require('buffer').Buffer.

But I'm not sure. /cc @nodejs/documentation