Hi Paul,

sorry for my late response.
Your advice was very helpful, but I have not resolve the problem.

As you wrote, It is exactly true that JS_InitStandardClasses may or  
may not be called in the view sandbox runtime.
So I modified couch_js for JS_InitStandardClasses to be called for  
sure as follows

  221         sandbox = JS_NewObject(sub_context, NULL, NULL, NULL);
  222         // if (!sandbox || !JS_InitStandardClasses(sub_context,  
sandbox)) {
  223         if (!JS_InitStandardClasses(sub_context, sandbox)) {

And I tried the view but the result did not change.
I'm not familiar with jsapi in SpiderMonkey so that I tried another  
view as follows:

function(doc) {
  emit("0_Array", Array.toString());
  emit("1_Number", Number.toString());
  emit("2_Is Array?",  doc.array_member    instanceof Array)
  emit("3_Is Number?", doc.array_member[1] instanceof Number)
  // test the user  class
  TestClass = function(){};
  var obj = new TestClass();
  emit("4_InstanceOfUserClass", obj instanceof TestClass)
}

got the result:

(key, value) ->
("0_Array", "function Array() {\n [native code]\n}")
("1_Number", "function Number() {\n [native code]\n}")
("2_Is Array", false)
("3_Is Number", false)
("4_InstanceOfUserClass", true)

So only native classes such as Array or Number seem to be defined, for  
which instanceof operation does not work.

I'll examine the behavior of "instanceof" (JS_InstanceOf API?)  in  
SpiderMonkey....

--
Yohei Sasaki
http://github.com/yssk22/


On 2009/04/09, at 0:30, Paul Davis wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 8:49 AM, Yohei Sasaki <yssk22@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I came across a problem in my view script with the "instanceof"  
>> operation.
>> Can anyone explain the cause of my problem duplicated by following  
>> steps?
>>
>> ===
>> 1. Add a document with an Array member into a database.
>>
>> {
>>  "_id": "oh_my_array",
>>  "_rev": "2-3397837489",
>>  "array_member": [
>>      1,
>>      2,
>>      3
>>  ]
>> }
>>
>> 2. Run the following map-only view.
>>
>> function(doc) {
>>  emit("0_raw_data", doc.array_member);
>>  emit("1_instanceof", (doc.array_member instanceof Array));
>>  emit("2_constructor.name", doc.array_member.constructor.name);
>>  emit("3_typeof", (typeof doc.array_member));
>> }
>>
>> 3. Get the strange value in "1_instanceof" in Futon.
>>
>> (key, value) ->
>> ("0_raw_data", [1,2,3])
>> ("1_instanceof", false);                         <-- why not true?
>> ("2_constructor.name", "Array");
>> ("3_typeof", "object");
>> ===
>> # As above, "constructor.name" is an workaround instead of  
>> instanceof.
>>
>> So I don't know why "instanceof" operation returns false for the  
>> array
>> value.
>> # This means we cannot use the instanceof operation for condtion  
>> expressions
>> such as  if(  a instanceof Array){ ... }
>>
>> BTW, I use CouchDB 0.9.0 (installed from the tarball on Apache)  
>> with JS
>> 1.7(installed from MacPorts).
>> And on couchjs standalone mode, the expression, 'instanceof Array'
>> returns true as follows:
>>
>> ===
>> mac:~ yssk22$ cat a.js
>> var doc = {
>>  "_id": "oh_my_array",
>>  "_rev": "2-3397837489",
>>  "array_member": [
>>      1,
>>      2,
>>      3
>>  ]
>> };
>> print(doc.array_member instanceof Array);
>>
>> mac:~ yssk22$ /usr/local/bin/couchjs a.js
>> true
>> ===
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> --
>> Yohei SASAKI
>> http://github.com/yssk22/
>>
>
> My first guess is that this is an artifact of the sandbox that view
> functions run in. Since the JS_Context* that is used for running the
> functions is never initialized with JS_InitStandardClasses the Array
> class isn't defined and as such you can't test if the object is an
> instance.
>
> IIRC, JS_InitStandardClasses has a fairly pricey runtime cost
> associated with it so I doubt calling it on all sand box contexts
> would be the way to go. Perhaps with some refactoring of couchjs to
> make sure that its called optionally, and only once per view update
> wouldn't be out of the question. Patches welcome.
>
> HTH,
> Paul Davis