The ECMAScript 2025 specification, the next iteration of the JavaScript standard, is likely to be finalized in June, bringing a host of new features and capabilities to the popular programming language. According to the ECMAScript development committee's GitHub page, nine finished proposals are expected to be published this year, including JSON modules, new regular expression capabilities, and new Set methods.

One of the most significant proposals is the introduction of JSON modules, which will allow developers to import JSON files as modules. This feature builds upon the import attributes proposal, enabling the import of a JSON module in a common way across JavaScript environments. This capability will simplify the process of working with JSON data in JavaScript applications.

Regular expressions are also getting a boost with the introduction of regular expression escaping and pattern modifiers. The regular expression escaping proposal addresses the issue of building regular expressions from strings without treating special characters as special regular expression tokens. The pattern modifiers proposal, on the other hand, provides the ability to control a subset of regular expression flags with a subexpression. This feature will be particularly useful in contexts where executable code cannot be evaluated, such as in JSON configuration files or Textmate language grammar files.

In addition, the duplicate named capturing groups proposal will allow regular expression capturing group names to be repeated, a feature that was previously not possible in JavaScript. This change will provide developers with more flexibility when working with regular expressions.

The sync iterator helpers proposal is another significant feature coming to ECMAScript 2025. This proposal introduces several interfaces to help with general usage and consumption of iterators in ECMAScript, making it easier to work with large or infinite enumerable data sets.

Other proposals lined up for ECMAScript 2025 include DurationFormat objects, Promise.try, Float 16 on TypedArrays, DataView, and Math.f16round, import attributes, and Set methods for JavaScript. These features will provide developers with more tools and capabilities to work with time durations, promises, and data types, among other things.

The development of the ECMAScript language specification has a long history, dating back to November 1996. The specification has evolved over the years, incorporating features from various originating technologies, including JavaScript and Microsoft's JScript. Last year's ECMAScript 2024 specification included features such as resizing and transferring ArrayBuffers and SharedArrayBuffers, as well as more advanced regular expression features for working with sets of strings.

The expected finalization of the ECMAScript 2025 specification in June marks a significant milestone in the evolution of the JavaScript standard. The new features and capabilities introduced in this version will provide developers with more power and flexibility to build complex applications and solve real-world problems.

As the JavaScript ecosystem continues to grow and evolve, the ECMAScript 2025 specification is poised to play a critical role in shaping the future of web development. With its focus on improving performance, security, and developer productivity, this specification is expected to have a significant impact on the industry.