IMO, you shouldn't have to deal with prefixing the anonymous function (or
other statements) with a semi-colon. If you're the one writing the code, you
*know* what will work when you compress your own code. I know that some
compressors are more forgiving than others (e.g., YUI), but I believe it
comes down to writing code properly. You wouldn't leave a plus sign off of
your addition statement (for lack of a better analogy). Why not properly end
all your statements with semi-colons?
(function () {
var myVar = 'hi';
...
})(); // Add the semi-colon here
var Pizza = {
isGood: function () { return true; }
}; // Add the semi-colon here
My $0.02. Happy coding.
~Philip
On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 2:32 PM, Rolf -nl <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thanks for the quick reply. I understood about closures and keeping
> things private, but got sort of confused where I saw usage of:
>
> (function(){
>
> var hello = this.hello = 'yo';
>
> and nowhere hello was used down in the code. But I think it could be
> there just as a standard anyway so I you would edit the code you don't
> have to think about it and you could just use 'hello' somewhere as you
> already defined it.
>
> })()
>
> about the ;function or !function etc. thanks for clearing up that
> chars like + or ~ would also 'work' -- again, I understood from
> reading elsewhere that people suggested the compressor would be wrong
> and should be looked at if the extra ! or ; before the parenthese was
> necessary to prevent errors (since trailing semi colons are not
> required). But still I would see it being used inside files which made
> me frown my eyebrows again.
>
>
>
> On May 15, 8:36 pm, Arian Stolwijk <[email protected]> wrote:
> > You should read about closures.
> >
> > They help to prevent putting all kind of variables public.
> >
> > so you can wrap it with in a closure, or self-invoking-function, there
> are
> > several names and methods, but the basic example used in MooTools is:
> >
> > (function(){
> >
> > var private = 'yo';
> >
> > })();
> >
> > alert(private); // throws error
> >
> > But we don't want to put everything privately, but want to make it
> > public. Fortunately we can just put something on the window object. The
> > window object is equal to `this` in the browser:
> >
> > console.log(window == this);
> >
> > This is also true in closures:
> >
> > (function(){
> >
> > this.hello = 'yo';
> >
> > })();
> >
> > console.log(window.hello, this.hello, hello); // yo
> >
> > For better compression you can do something like this:
> >
> > (function(){
> >
> > var hello = this.hello = 'yo';
> >
> > // now we can use hello here, which is private, instead of this.hello
> every
> > thime
> >
> > })();
> >
> > In 1.3.1 and in PowerTools .call(this) was used. .call and .apply work
> like
> > bind, but also execute the function. So here the inner this was set to
> the
> > outer this, which was still window. This supposed to fix something in
> some
> > fancy environments, but didn't work in node.js after all, since this
> refers
> > to something else there and not the global object.
> >
> > There are also other variants to fix nasty errors with compressing, when
> the
> > last ; is forgotten, see this example, which works ok
> >
> > (function(){
> >
> > })()
> > (function(){
> > })()
> >
> > but when we compress:
> >
> > (function(){})()(function(){})()
> >
> > which errors.
> >
> > Putting some other char before the (function(){, like a !, ; ~, + or
> > whatever solves this problem.
> >
> > I hope this helps you and I've given you some pointers to search further.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 8:16 PM, Rolf -nl <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > > Looking at Moo's source and following the syntax and code style rules
> > > I was (in the past) used to do it like:
> >
> > > var myClass = new Class({
> > > });
> >
> > > then people started to wrap it and adopted:
> >
> > > (function(){
> >
> > > var myClass = new Class({
> > > });
> >
> > > })();
> >
> > > or an alternate ending for the wrap (like in cpojer's powertools):
> >
> > > }).call(this);
> >
> > > ryan florence is dropping trailing semi-colons in his (non mootools
> > > released) js code (which is fine I think, others can disagree) but
> > > starting code with a semi-colon before every parenthese like:
> >
> > > ;(function(){
> > > })();
> >
> > > and I also noticed this:
> >
> > > var myClass = this.myClass = new Class({
> > > });
> >
> > > since when are we also adding this.myClass? What is the benefit, why
> > > is it important?
> >
> > > Ok, what I'm trying to say is that I see sort of the use of all of
> > > this and I understand what it does, but I don't fully 'get' the path
> > > to follow or why I would do it one way or the other.
> >
> > > Maybe someone can enlighten us here on the list or maybe a blog post
> > > to take away some confusion.
>
