On Aug 22, 2008, at 7:26 AM, Ingvar von Schoultz wrote:
> Brendan Eich wrote:
>> More helpful would be comments on the utility of let blocks
>> (a.k.a. let statements) and let expressions.
>
> While reading up on this, I noticed that you can declare the
> same name with both let and var in the same scope:
>
> var x = 'global';
> let x = 42;
If these are both within an explicit block, the let will shadow the
hoisted var.
> Even if you do this in the global scope or function top level,
> both will exist, in the same scope, one shadowing the other
> (but details differ between texts and test results).
This past April at the ES4 WG meeting we decided to make let equate
to var at top level within a function body or program. This is *not*
what JS in Firefox 2 and 3 do in functions, but it is what the
SpiderMonkey implementation does at top of program. We are fixing
things to match the latest proposal all around.
Another thing we do that's a bit harsh is to call repeated let x;
declarations in the same explicit block an error.
> In my opinion this is not a useful feature, quite the contrary.
> If the variables are far apart on the page, the disappearance of
> one of them will be mysterious and difficult to debug.
It's also a pain to implement in few passes at top level, if one
prefers to parse a top-level statement at a time and recycle the AST
after generating code.
> In the special case of global and function-top-level scope,
> intuitively let and var seem synonymous.
Agreed, and that's what Firefox 3.1 will do.
> But throwing an error seems fine too.
>
> { let x;
> { var x = 10;
> }
> }
>
> The let hides the var. This should throw an error too, as I see
> it. If a name can't be reached where it's declared, that's hard
> to debug.
Could be -- thanks for the feedback.
/be
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