'window.location' should allow assigning a string

Bug Report

🔎 Search Terms

window.location, location.href

🕗 Version & Regression Information

• No version has the behaviour I’d expect, however up to version 4.5.5 windows.location is of type Location, while from version 4.6.2 is of type (string | Location) & Location. FAQ do not mention anything about it.

⏯ Playground Link

Playground link with relevant code

💻 Code

window.location = "https://github.com/";

🙁 Actual behavior

window.location = "https://github.com/";
// (property) location: (string | Location) & Location
// Type 'string' is not assignable to type '(string | Location) & Location'.(2322)

While it’s true that Location is an object and not a string, assigning a string to it is a long-established and recommended pattern, that may produce a different result from window.location.href = "https://github.com/";.

Example of where assigning a string to window.location is the correct behaviour: https://javascript.info/cross-window-communication#4q5rssu5ys

Also, according to MDN:

Though Window.location is a read-only Location object, you can also assign a DOMString to it. This means that you can work with location as if it were a string in most cases: location = 'http://www.example.com' is a synonym of location.href = 'http://www.example.com'.

Further discussion on difference between assigning to location or to location.href: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2383401/javascript-setting-location-href-versus-location

🙂 Expected behavior

window.location = "https://github.com/";
// (property) location: string | Location
// No error

Mock playground

I could not find the rationale behind the change that happened between 4.5.5 and 4.6.2, that changed its type from Location to (string | Location) & Location, but I wonder if the intended result was the same I’m expecting here.

[KKrisu]

(window as Window).location = 'abc' ✔️

[el1s7]

Typescript is full of annying shit like this, just do

//@ts-ignore
window.location = '/'