On May 24, 3:24 pm, Michael <mich...@michaelminella.com> wrote:
However, in all of my scenarios, I've declared
> functions like this:
>
> var myFunction = function myFunction() {alert('hi');}
>
> and the calls to myFunction work just fine. My question is...why does
> my way work? According to the Prototype documentation, the local
> variable myFunction should be thrown away after the eval. Any insight
> anyone can provide would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
According to Flanagan's book (section 8.1.2) the optional function-
name in a function literal is not assigned to a variable, but
apparently lives in a special namespace of its own that allows the
function to refer to itself. So unless the function is recursive, the
above is identical to
var myFunction = function() {alert('hi');}
and more or less identical to
function myFunction() {alert('hi')}
(which is a function *statement* not a function *literal*, and so has
different syntax, with the name being required.)
Crockford, in "Javascript: The Good Parts" describes function
*statements* as one of the Bad Parts (appendix B), and recommends
avoiding them, in favour of the
var f = function() {}
form.
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