7 ms·

Valid JavaScript variable names

91 points by mathias 15y ago

moe 15y ago
Yup, it does indeed work. http://jsfiddle.net/bJAed/ http://jsfiddle.net/bJAed/
noblethrasher 15y ago
Works in C# as well...
meow 15y ago
For any one curious, 'ಠ' is pronounced as 'Ta' (Kannada language) :)
- akavi 15y ago
  More descriptively, it's a aspirated unvoiced sub-apical palatal plosive. If you wish to make the sound, position your tongue like you're trying to stick it down your throat. The bottom of the tongue should be touching the top of your mouth. Then, make a "tuh" sound. If you do it right, it should sound hollow and "harder" than a normal Englilsh "t" sound.
- malandrew 15y ago
  Without copying and pasting, how do I type this letter on OS X?
  - cal2 15y ago
    System Preferences > Language & Text > Input Sources > Enable: Kannada The letter is SHIFT + ' (or just ") to yield ಠ.
  - chimeracoder 15y ago
    Linux users just type <C-shift>uxxx, where xxx is the hex code point. (That actually works for anyone running X11). Unfortunately, you apparently can't do it on OS X without bringing up a menu and/or changing your keyboard layout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input#Hexadecimal_code_input http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input#Hexadecimal_code_...
    - phaker 15y ago
      Specifically this works only in GTK apps.
      - chimeracoder 15y ago
        Not in my experience...
  - mathias 15y ago
    I’ve created a custom OS X keyboard layout that allows me to just press `⌥` + `O` to get `ಠ_ಠ`. Here it is: https://github.com/mathiasbynens/custom.keylayout/tree/master/qwerty https://github.com/mathiasbynens/custom.keylayout/tree/maste...
    - astrodust 15y ago
      Better not have any friends named Bjಠ_ಠrn.
bwarp 15y ago
Whilst this is a good novelty, please please please don't do this - ever! As my father said "just because you can put your penis in a goat, doesn't mean you should".
- olavk 15y ago
  It does sometimes make sense to have identifiers in non-English languages. If could be for a DSL, or it could be because the business logic concerns concepts which is not trivially translatable to english.
  - DrJokepu 15y ago
    And this works right until a developer who doesn't speak the language will have to deal with that code, which will happen much sooner than you'd expect. Half of the fun is figuring out the meaning of variable names, the other half is figuring out how to type ß on a non-German keyboard.
    - chc 15y ago
      Minor side note: I cannot for the life of me figure out why other operating systems won't borrow Apple's fantastic input scheme, in which this something as simple as a ß isn't a big deal. Need an emdash? Easy, option-shift-minus. Need an ñ? Easy, option-n-n. ß, ≠, ¡, ÷ or any number of other relatively common symbols? Easy. Most of them are even fairly mnemonic (e.g. ß is option-S, ¡ is option-1, ≠ is option-= and ÷ is option-/).
      - ZenPsycho 15y ago
        Lion made this even easier by stealing iOS's input scheme: Hold down a keyboard key for long enough and you can pick a special character out of a context pop out. îïíīįì šéē
  - kragen 15y ago
    I wish JS was better-suited to embedded DSLs. But without operator overloading, with required parens on function arguments, no (standard) method_missing, no atoms, and a limited set of characters for identifiers, it's pretty limited.
r4vik 15y ago
why shouldn't it be?
enko 15y ago
It's a valid ruby method name! def ಠ_ಠ puts 'i like turtles' end
- d0ugal 15y ago
  It's valid in Python 3 too.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
bobowzki 15y ago
Because it's awesome!
jacobr 15y ago
So who creates the λ functional JavaScript library?
- ajuc 15y ago
  I'll start: function λ(code) { return eval( "function () {"+ " var $=arguments;" + " return " + code + ";" "}" ); } var sum = map([1,2,3,4], λ("$[0] + $[1]")); I'm not really serious, but I'd like eval-less version of this, very, very much. function(x,y) { return x*y; } is so verbose.
Zarathust 15y ago
The tutorial about "How to write unmaintanable code" would love this. They already have some hints about putting accents on "int i" and other subtileties like that http://thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html http://thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html
rhplus 15y ago
An Identifier is an IdentifierName that is not a ReservedWord. In .NET CLR languages, you can use Unicode for identifiers like in JS, but an interesting side-effect of the 'common' aspect of the CLR is that you can use reserved keywords too. This is because reserved words in one language are not necessarily reserved words in another language. Someone could write the following valid definition in VB.NET: Public Property ushort() AS Integer And because it's a reserved keyword in C# you'd have to reference it using the '@' escape: foo.@ushort = 123; (There are probably far more confusing examples than this)
rll 15y ago
Works fine in PHP as well: php > $ಠ_ಠ = 1; php > echo $ಠ_ಠ; 1 php > $π = pi(); php > echo $π; 3.1415926535897931159979634685442 php > function ಠ_ಠ() { echo 1; } php > ಠ_ಠ(); 1
adavies42 15y ago
> Browsers support identifiers that unescape to a reserved word, so long as at least one character is escaped using a Unicode escape sequence. i smell new xss exploits....
kragen 15y ago
The most legitimate use for this is for top-level namespaces, which need to be short or they'll junk up your code like crazy. jQuery already took $, and Underscore took _. Maybe 木, ϗ, _⃗, 个, î, 人, Ǝ (not ∃, that's illegal!), ℵ, 二, ℜ, 龍, ℕ, 八, Δ, 大, ʃ, ː, 卐, or as mentioned below, λ? ˀ is probably too obnoxious though. For no particularly good reason, ☺ and ☠ are illegal. I think the Plan9 strategy of considering non-ASCII characters as identifier characters by default is probably a better one than changing the language grammar every time the Unicode standard revs. (As mentioned in another comment, http://canonical.org/~kragen/setting-up-keyboard.html http://canonical.org/~kragen/setting-up-keyboard.html https://github.com/kragen/xcompose https://github.com/kragen/xcompose. The Chinese I copied and pasted from http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=radicals http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=radicals though.)
rogerbinns 15y ago
For those who like SQLite, it allows you to create tables and columns with zero length names (you have to quote) and it does indeed work correctly when you use them. This is valid: CREATE TABLE ""("" ""); A zero length table name with one column with a zero length name having a type of a zero length name.

91 points by mathias 15y ago

moe 15y ago

Yup, it does indeed work. http://jsfiddle.net/bJAed/ http://jsfiddle.net/bJAed/

noblethrasher 15y ago

Works in C# as well...

meow 15y ago

For any one curious, 'ಠ' is pronounced as 'Ta' (Kannada language) :)

akavi 15y ago
More descriptively, it's a aspirated unvoiced sub-apical palatal plosive. If you wish to make the sound, position your tongue like you're trying to stick it down your throat. The bottom of the tongue should be touching the top of your mouth. Then, make a "tuh" sound. If you do it right, it should sound hollow and "harder" than a normal Englilsh "t" sound.
malandrew 15y ago
Without copying and pasting, how do I type this letter on OS X?
- cal2 15y ago
  System Preferences > Language & Text > Input Sources > Enable: Kannada The letter is SHIFT + ' (or just ") to yield ಠ.
- chimeracoder 15y ago
  Linux users just type <C-shift>uxxx, where xxx is the hex code point. (That actually works for anyone running X11). Unfortunately, you apparently can't do it on OS X without bringing up a menu and/or changing your keyboard layout: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input#Hexadecimal_code_input http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input#Hexadecimal_code_...
  - phaker 15y ago
    Specifically this works only in GTK apps.
    - chimeracoder 15y ago
      Not in my experience...
- mathias 15y ago
  I’ve created a custom OS X keyboard layout that allows me to just press `⌥` + `O` to get `ಠ_ಠ`. Here it is: https://github.com/mathiasbynens/custom.keylayout/tree/master/qwerty https://github.com/mathiasbynens/custom.keylayout/tree/maste...
  - astrodust 15y ago
    Better not have any friends named Bjಠ_ಠrn.

bwarp 15y ago

Whilst this is a good novelty, please please please don't do this - ever! As my father said "just because you can put your penis in a goat, doesn't mean you should".

olavk 15y ago
It does sometimes make sense to have identifiers in non-English languages. If could be for a DSL, or it could be because the business logic concerns concepts which is not trivially translatable to english.
- DrJokepu 15y ago
  And this works right until a developer who doesn't speak the language will have to deal with that code, which will happen much sooner than you'd expect. Half of the fun is figuring out the meaning of variable names, the other half is figuring out how to type ß on a non-German keyboard.
  - chc 15y ago
    Minor side note: I cannot for the life of me figure out why other operating systems won't borrow Apple's fantastic input scheme, in which this something as simple as a ß isn't a big deal. Need an emdash? Easy, option-shift-minus. Need an ñ? Easy, option-n-n. ß, ≠, ¡, ÷ or any number of other relatively common symbols? Easy. Most of them are even fairly mnemonic (e.g. ß is option-S, ¡ is option-1, ≠ is option-= and ÷ is option-/).
    - ZenPsycho 15y ago
      Lion made this even easier by stealing iOS's input scheme: Hold down a keyboard key for long enough and you can pick a special character out of a context pop out. îïíīįì šéē
- kragen 15y ago
  I wish JS was better-suited to embedded DSLs. But without operator overloading, with required parens on function arguments, no (standard) method_missing, no atoms, and a limited set of characters for identifiers, it's pretty limited.

r4vik 15y ago

why shouldn't it be?

enko 15y ago

It's a valid ruby method name! def ಠ_ಠ puts 'i like turtles' end

d0ugal 15y ago
It's valid in Python 3 too.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

bobowzki 15y ago

Because it's awesome!

jacobr 15y ago

So who creates the λ functional JavaScript library?

ajuc 15y ago
I'll start: function λ(code) { return eval( "function () {"+ " var $=arguments;" + " return " + code + ";" "}" ); } var sum = map([1,2,3,4], λ("$[0] + $[1]")); I'm not really serious, but I'd like eval-less version of this, very, very much. function(x,y) { return x*y; } is so verbose.

Zarathust 15y ago

The tutorial about "How to write unmaintanable code" would love this. They already have some hints about putting accents on "int i" and other subtileties like that http://thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html http://thc.org/root/phun/unmaintain.html

rhplus 15y ago

An Identifier is an IdentifierName that is not a ReservedWord. In .NET CLR languages, you can use Unicode for identifiers like in JS, but an interesting side-effect of the 'common' aspect of the CLR is that you can use reserved keywords too. This is because reserved words in one language are not necessarily reserved words in another language. Someone could write the following valid definition in VB.NET: Public Property ushort() AS Integer And because it's a reserved keyword in C# you'd have to reference it using the '@' escape: foo.@ushort = 123; (There are probably far more confusing examples than this)

rll 15y ago

Works fine in PHP as well: php > $ಠ_ಠ = 1; php > echo $ಠ_ಠ; 1 php > $π = pi(); php > echo $π; 3.1415926535897931159979634685442 php > function ಠ_ಠ() { echo 1; } php > ಠ_ಠ(); 1

adavies42 15y ago

> Browsers support identifiers that unescape to a reserved word, so long as at least one character is escaped using a Unicode escape sequence. i smell new xss exploits....

kragen 15y ago

The most legitimate use for this is for top-level namespaces, which need to be short or they'll junk up your code like crazy. jQuery already took $, and Underscore took _. Maybe 木, ϗ, _⃗, 个, î, 人, Ǝ (not ∃, that's illegal!), ℵ, 二, ℜ, 龍, ℕ, 八, Δ, 大, ʃ, ː, 卐, or as mentioned below, λ? ˀ is probably too obnoxious though. For no particularly good reason, ☺ and ☠ are illegal. I think the Plan9 strategy of considering non-ASCII characters as identifier characters by default is probably a better one than changing the language grammar every time the Unicode standard revs. (As mentioned in another comment, http://canonical.org/~kragen/setting-up-keyboard.html http://canonical.org/~kragen/setting-up-keyboard.html https://github.com/kragen/xcompose https://github.com/kragen/xcompose. The Chinese I copied and pasted from http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=radicals http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=radicals though.)

rogerbinns 15y ago

For those who like SQLite, it allows you to create tables and columns with zero length names (you have to quote) and it does indeed work correctly when you use them. This is valid: CREATE TABLE ""("" ""); A zero length table name with one column with a zero length name having a type of a zero length name.