REPL .delete meta command

[Annihil]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Please describe the problem you are trying to solve.

> const a = 1;
> .clear
> const a = 1;
Uncaught SyntaxError: Identifier 'a' has already been declared

Describe the solution you'd like
Please describe the desired behavior.

> const a = 1;
> .delete a
> const a = 1;

Describe alternatives you've considered
Please describe alternative solutions or features you have considered.

• Using repl.start() and .clear but this work around is not satisfactory in my opinion.
• Using var a = 1 but var behaves differently from let or const identifiers so not satisfactory either imo.

[EladKeyshawn]

@Ayase-252 @Annihil Hey! whats the status of this feature request? is this something that should be worked on ?

[EladKeyshawn]

@Annihil Also fix typo in title 'delete'

[Ayase-252]

@EladKeyshawn

I think it would be nice to have such a feature. But I don't know whether it is feasible in Node.js. It may need some assessments from the core team.

As far as I know, console in Chrome dev tool has support to redeclare let and class, but not const.

let a = 1
undefined
let a = 1
undefined
const b = 1
undefined
const b = 1
VM215:1 Uncaught SyntaxError: Identifier 'b' has already been declared

cc @nodejs/repl

[EladKeyshawn]

@Ayase-252 I can't see why wouldn't it be feasible, I'll give a look into it. :)

[BridgeAR]

This is pretty much a duplicate of #8309. I am going to close it as such. I guess redeclaring by default would be favorable. To support redeclaring const, there are more changes in V8 necessary. To implement redeclaring let there's work in at least the repl required and likely the vm module.