Re: [Wikiwyg-dev] Re: BUG: JavaScript strict warnings (Dave Howorth)

[Ingy dot Net <ingy@ttul.org>]

Groovy, thanks. What are you using to find the strict warnings? Javascript
console?

Cheers, Ingy

On 16/02/06 10:55 -0800, Alex Vincent wrote:
> Ingy dot Net wrote:
> >Alex,
> >
> >I have a lot of questions on this patch. Some of these questions might be
> >addressed in earlier posts that I have not read yet (grrrrr), but here I go
> >anyway:
> >  
> No, I just posted the patch this morning.  :-)  Actually, you're the 
> first person to reply.
> >As far as I know, these 3 function headers mean the same thing (in the 
> >global
> >scope):
> >
> >    onload = function() { ...
> >    window.onload = function() { ...
> >    function onload() { ...
> >
> >and even this:
> >
> >    this.onload = function() { ...
> >
> >So this:
> >
> >    window.onload = function onload() { ...
> >
> >seems redundant at best
> They may have the same global scope, but Mozilla will tell you there are 
> strict warnings with it.  What this means is that
> it's making its "best guess" at what your intent is, and it may have 
> guessed wrong.  It's really better to fix the warnings and be
> absolutely clear to the JS interpreter what you want.  This helps you in 
> turn by forcing you to be clearer in your code, so that
> other developers have a lower chance of accidentally breaking your code.
> 
> Explicitly declaring "window.onload" removes the confusion.
> 
> As for function() versus function onload(), that's more of a stylistic 
> difference.  The key there, though, is that Venkman, Mozilla's 
> JavaScript debugger, reads the function declaration for function names.  
> Then when it generates a JavaScript function stack for debugging, you 
> can see clearly what function it is.
> 
> >, and this:
> >
> >    proto.insert_text_at_cursor = function insert_text_at_cursor(text) {
> >
> >just seems wrong.
> >  
> Again, this is more for the debugger's benefit.
> >---
> >
> >Next, variables defined at the global scope are global whether or not you 
> >use
> >`var`. So the Wikiwyg style is to not use `var` there:
> >
> >    -klass = Wikiwyg.Wikitext;
> >    +var klass = Wikiwyg.Wikitext;
> >  
> Which causes more strict warnings.
> >---
> >
> >Also I'm not sure why you /do/ return null sometimes and don't others:
> >
> >    +        return null; // Silence strict warning.
> >
> >vs:
> >
> >    -            return false
> >    +            return;
> >
> >---
> >  
> Mainly I was trying to keep with the convention in the function in 
> question, and check the caller to see if they're checking a return 
> value.  If they do check a return value, then generally I want to return 
> something.  :-)
> 
> On the return after die(), return null is just to silence the warning, 
> since die() throws an exception.
> >If you could address these for me I surely appreciate it.
> >
> >A final note... this patch contains quite a few different types of
> >changes. It is better for me to have more smaller patches than one big
> >patch. Of course that's a little bit harder for you since you don't have
> >commit access yet.
> >
> >Cheers, Ingy
> >  
> I'll work on that, but I figured this patch was small enough :-)
> 
> Alex