Return statement and whitespace

[John G Harris]

In comp.lang.javascript message <[email protected]
8924D9443D28E23ED5CD>, Sat, 8 Aug 2009 19:13:39, John G Harris


Finding out what happens on actual systems seems essential for
professional implementation.

One should use only that which *both* ought to work *and* actually does
work.

If something does not work in one of, say, IE & FF, then it's not
appropriate for Web use, even if one thinks the standard says that it
should work.

We're talking about different quadrants of the true/false
positive/negative diagram. I'm talking about code that appears to do
something but isn't described by any public standard. You're talking
about something that is described in a public standard but doesn't work
in some browsers. The second case is annoying, but at least it can be
proved by running a piece of code and noting what happens (or doesn't).

And I can test, say, for (J=1 ; J<9) J++ in the current browser
in less time than it takes to open the ECMA PDF, let alone find the
right part of it.

If it fails you know not to use it, though you don't know whether it was
supposed to work or not.

If it doesn't fail you have a problem working out what it's safe to
assume.

John