Some functions limited by Function.prototype.apply

[pauldraper]

There are limitations to the number of arguments that can be passed with Function.prototype.apply.

Some functions that use Function.prototype.apply only use it with the variable arguments in the first place. Those are limited by this anyway. There's nothing to do there, at least not without changing the API.

• goog.array.concat
• goog.array.splice
• goog.array.join
• goog.array.slice
• goog.math.average
• goog.math.standardDeviation

But some functions accept an array as a single argument and then pass that to Function.prototype.apply. It is reasonable, though somewhat uncommon, for there to be more than 65,537 elements in an array.

• goog.array.extend
• goog.array.flatten
• goog.array.insertArrayAt
• goog.array.rotate
• goog.math.Path.prototype.appendPath
• goog.object.create
• goog.string.format
• goog.testing.PerformanceTimer.createResults
• goog.testing.PerformanceTimer.prototype.finishTask_

---

The numbers seemed to vary (OS dependent?), but this is what I've measured:

Browser	apply()	literal
Chrome 14	131155	32767
Chrome 35	126213	65535
Firefox 30	500001	65535
IE 9	254335	65533
IE 10	253667	65533
IE 11	252447	65533
Opera 22	126063	65535
Safari 4	524215	524205
Safari 7	65537	522159

JSFiddle

---

Other references to this problem:

• This issue with goog.crypt.byteArrayToString was mentioned in the discussion list and then fixed by da353e0.
• Webkit bug, reported 2012-03-11

[Ubehebe]

It does seem like we could replace .apply(...) with direct function calls in many of the methods you point out. Feel free to send pull requests. Beyond that, was there a more general API change you had in mind?

[pauldraper]

No, that's pretty much it.

[diracdeltas]

goog.array.extend and goog.array.flatten have been fixed.