Javascript scoping makes my head hurt

Written by Piers Cawley on

Who came up with the javascript scoping rules? What were they smoking. Here’s some Noddy Perl that demonstrates what I’m on about: my @subs; for my $i (0..4) { push @subs, sub { $i } } print $subs[0]->(); # => 0; Here’s the equivalent (or what I thought should be the equivalent) in Javscript: var subs = []; for (var i in [0,1,2,3,4]) { subs[i] = function () { return i; } } alert subs0 // => 4 What’s going on?

Who came up with the javascript scoping rules? What were they smoking. Here’s some Noddy Perl that demonstrates what I’m on about:

my @subs; 
for my $i (0..4) {
  push @subs, sub { $i }
}

print $subs[0]->(); # => 0;
Here's the equivalent (or what I thought should be the equivalent) in Javscript:
var subs = [];
for (var i in [0,1,2,3,4]) {
  subs[i] = function () {
    return i;
  }
}
alert subs[0]() // => 4
What's going on? In Perl, $i is scoped to the `for` block. Essentially, each time through the loop, a new variable is created, so the generated closures all refer to different $is. In Javascript, `i` is scoped to the `for` loop's containing function. Each of the generated closures refer to the same `i`. Which means that, to get the same effect as the perl code, you must write:
var subs = [];
for (var shared_i in [0,1,2,3,4]) {
  (function (i) {
    subs[i] = function () {
      return i;
    };
  })(shared_i);
}
subs[0]() // => 0
h3. Dodgy Ruby scoping

I had initially planned to write the example “How it should work” code in Ruby, but it turns out that Ruby’s for has the same problem:

subs = [];
for i in 0..4
  subs << lambda { i }
end
subs[0].call # => 4
Which is one reason why sensible Ruby programmers don't use `for`. If I were writing the snippet in 'real' Ruby, I'd write:
subs = (0..4).collect { |i|
  lambda { i }
}
subs[0].call # => 0
h3. My conclusion

Javascript is weird. Okay, so you already know this. In so many ways it’s a lovely language, but it does have some annoyingly odd corners.

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