Getting rid of "includes" polyfill-type function in util folder

[pano9000]

Hello all,

I recently noticed the includes function in the util folder, which was originally added in 2018, as some sort of polyfill for the Array.prototype.includes() method:

https://github.com/validatorjs/validator.js/commit/9457642473d3e282310a829754929463e6998941 - "Created includes function for array to cater older browsers"

I see a few issues with this in the meantime:

• Please correct me if I am wrong, as I am not Babel expert, but doesn't "Babel" take care of that anyways?
• this function is currently only used in isDecimal exclusively (the other 2 functions in the commit above in the meantime where moved to using "Sets" instead of Arrays, so this includes function is not applicable to these anymore)
• the Array.prototype.some() method is a lot slower than Array.prototype.includes(): I ran a few local benchmarks with benchmark package, and the native Array.prototype.includes() method was always 2-4x times faster

node .\benchmark.js
  with native `Array.prototype.includes()` x 843,902,658 ops/sec ±0.18% (91 runs sampled)
  with current `Array.prototype.some()` polyfill type x 147,008,135 ops/sec ±0.10% (95 runs sampled)
Fastest is with native `Array.prototype.includes()`

So question here is: Am I wrong about Babel? If not: Are there any reason to still keep this includes function? That util function is not exported, so there also shouldn't be any backwards compatibility issues, that we need to keep in mind.

What are your thoughts? Happy to take care about the PR for this then

Kind regards,

Pano

[WikiRik]

Related PR; https://github.com/validatorjs/validator.js/pull/2099

I think that Babel can take care of this, but I don't know if this project has the proper configuration for this.

[pano9000]

@WikiRik thank you for the comment, and making me aware about #2099 I will make a comment there, about my thoughts here