[maga]

I believe it's a joke. At least I opened these comments thinking it was a joke akin to VanillaJS framework[1]. querySelectorAll returns an empty array if there are no matches, you don't need fancy string messages or errors for that.

[1] http://vanilla-js.com/

[atomwaffel]

> querySelectorAll returns an empty array if there are no matches, you don't need fancy string messages or errors for that.

An empty NodeList[1] to be precise, which is sort of kind of like an array in that it has a length property and you can access its elements with index notation (`nodeList[0]`), but it doesn't inherit from Array.prototype, so it doesn't support methods like `forEach` or `map`.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/NodeList

[maga]

Indeed. Though still, NodeList has the length property with which you can check for "emptiness" the same as with an array, that's what I meant to say.

Speaking of which, there are few features in ES2015 that make NodeList more palatable:

1. Iterables. NodeList is iterable and you can use, among others, the for..of construction to iterate over its content.

2. There is the Array.from method for turning array-like objects into true arrays. Not much different from our usual method of calling [].slice.call in this particular case, yet it's a bit shorter, standardized, and has a few additional perks, like accepting map function as the second argument.

[ycitm]

At least in new versions of Chrome, NodeList is iterable, so you can use forEach and map on it.

https://medium.com/@devlucky/nodelist-object-is-finally-an-i...

[zackify]

[ ...document.querySelectorAll('nodes') ] will convert it to a real array ;)

[NicoSantangelo]

You got it, it's just a joke :)