In Typescript, is it correct to say that { [key: string]: any } is identical to { [key: number]: any }?

Recently diving into Typescript has been an interesting journey, especially when stumbling upon weird language behaviors. After writing the following code snippet, I was surprised to see that it compiled and executed successfully:

let x: { [key: string]: any } = {'hi': 'bye'}
let y: { [key: number]: any} = x;

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It's puzzling how an object like {'hi': 'bye'} can be assigned to a variable of type {[key: number]: any}. Logically, 'hi' is not a number.

Answer №1

When comparing { [key: string]: any } and { [key: number]: any }, it is important to note that they define different sets of keys. Just because you can assign y = x, it doesn't necessarily mean that the types of those variables are identical. This simply indicates that they are "compatible" or "assignable". If you can assign x = y, then we can say that y is assignable to x (or the type of y is assignable to the type of x). Often, this implies that y is a subtype of x. Therefore, { [key: string]: any } can be assigned to { [key: number]: any }. But why? What does { [k: K]: V } actually mean?


An index signature in the form of {[k: K]: V} does not require every property key to be of type K. It simply enforces that if a key is of type K, then the corresponding value must be of type

V</code. This specification does not address how keys of other types should be handled. TypeScript's <a href="https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/typescript-in-5-minutes.html#structural-type-system" rel="nofollow noreferrer">structural type system</a> generally allows for "extra" or "excess" properties, <a href="https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/release-notes/typescript-1-6.html#stricter-object-literal-assignment-checks" rel="nofollow noreferrer">with exceptions involving object literals</a>.</p>
<p>Therefore, <code>{ [key: number]: any}
specifies that all property keys of type number* will have values of type any. You can access such an object with any numeric key. However, this declaration does not restrict keys like "hi". Hence, an object of this type could potentially contain a key like "hi". The following assignment would succeed:

let x: { [key: string]: any } = { 'hi': 'bye' };
let y: { [key: number]: any } = x; // valid

Despite this assignment, attempting to index into y with a non-number key will trigger a compiler error since the type of y cannot predict what lies behind such a key:

y[1]; // valid
y.hi; // error

If you try to directly assign {hi: "bye"} as an object literal to y, it will fail due to excess property checking:

y = { 'hi': 'bye' }; // error; 

This failure does not imply that {hi: "bye"} is incompatible with the type of y</code (since <code>y = x works). Instead, it signals a potential developer mistake, as after assigning y = { hi: "bye" }, the compiler no longer recognizes the hi key when accessing y.hi. In contrast, y = x avoids this issue by retaining access to the hi key provided by x.

Playground link to code


* In JavaScript, there aren't keys of type number; rather, there are numeric strings like "0" and "1". TypeScript treats them as numbers for ease of iteration over arrays with numerical indices.

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