dtysky
2018-01-12 13:20:47 +08:00
Error Correction
One of the most hotly contested religious wars in the JS community (besides tabs vs. spaces) is whether to rely heavily/exclusively on ASI or not.
Most, but not all, semicolons are optional, but the two ;s in the for ( .. ) .. loop header are required.
On the pro side of this debate, many developers believe that ASI is a useful mechanism that allows them to write more terse (and more "beautiful") code by omitting all but the strictly required ;s (which are very few). It is often asserted that ASI makes many ;s optional, so a correctly written program without them is no different than a correctly written program with them.
On the con side of the debate, many other developers will assert that there are too many places that can be accidental gotchas, especially for newer, less experienced developers, where unintended ;s being magically inserted change the meaning. Similarly, some developers will argue that if they omit a semicolon, it's a flat-out mistake, and they want their tools (linters, etc.) to catch it before the JS engine corrects the mistake under the covers.
Let me just share my perspective. A strict reading of the spec implies that ASI is an "error correction" routine. What kind of error, you may ask? Specifically, a parser error. In other words, in an attempt to have the parser fail less, ASI lets it be more tolerant.
But tolerant of what? In my view, the only way a parser error occurs is if it's given an incorrect/errored program to parse. So, while ASI is strictly correcting parser errors, the only way it can get such errors is if there were first program authoring errors -- omitting semicolons where the grammar rules require them.
So, to put it more bluntly, when I hear someone claim that they want to omit "optional semicolons," my brain translates that claim to "I want to write the most parser-broken program I can that will still work."
I find that to be a ludicrous position to take and the arguments of saving keystrokes and having more "beautiful code" to be weak at best.
Furthermore, I don't agree that this is the same thing as the spaces vs tabs debate -- that it's purely cosmetic -- but rather I believe it's a fundamental question of writing code that adheres to grammar requirements vs. code that relies on grammar exceptions to just barely skate through.
Another way of looking at it is that relying on ASI is essentially considering newlines to be significant "whitespace." Other languages like Python have true significant whitespace. But is it really appropriate to think of JavaScript as having significant newlines as it stands today?
My take: use semicolons wherever you know they are "required," and limit your assumptions about ASI to a minimum.