Greetings,
I've been using Prototype for a year or so now and think it is very
useful. I have a web project currently underway, and I have been
integrating JavaScriptLint (www.javascriptlint.com) validation into my
build/test cycle and I run JSL with almost all options turned on after
reading Douglas Crockford's JSLint website and book (Javascript: The
Good Parts).
When I cranked up all the options on JavaScriptLint (jsl), I found
that the Prototype library was producing a number of minor errors and
warnings, from missing semicolons at the end of lines to unbracketed
"if" clauses. Nothing huge, but my tests were failing. I find that
having all the code checks enabled has helped me catch errors in my
own JS in the past and I like to have all my JS code checked,
including open source libs.
I've submitted a patch (Lighthouse ticket #525) to the current version
of Prototype which fixes all errors and warnings. The ticket includes
the details, including regression tests. Tobie Langel suggested that
I bring up the topic of JSL/JSLint validation on this mailing list.
Apparently fixing the warnings has been suggested in the past but no
action was ever taken. I hope this patch will be seriously
considered: I have already done the work to fix the warnings so it
passes the lint tests.
>From a question of code style, my personal opinion is that the
benefits of strict lint checking outweigh the additional burden of
slightly more verbose code. For example,
if (foo > 0) bar = undefined; // JSL warning
vs.
if (foo > 0) { bar = undefined; } // no warning
I've tried to keep with the code style present in the baseline as much
as possible. I realize I have introduced a few more substantial
structural changes, converting
while(foo = list.next()) { ... }
loops to
for(foo = list.next(); foo; foo = list.next())
in order to avoid assignments within tests, but I agree with Crockford
that this more explicit coding style improves the ease with which the
code can be read and understood.
Please understand that I'm not trying to start a coding-style holy war
here. It seems like more and more blogs are writing about lint for
javascript so I thought others might like to have a version of
Prototype which passed all the tests.
I hope this patch is accepted and committed to the main Prototype
baseline.
Thanks again for the great work on Prototype.
-Dane Avilla
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