Update on ES3.1 block scoped function declarations

[Brendan Eich]

On Jul 10, 2008, at 10:55 AM, Allen Wirfs-Brock wrote:
> We discussed these issues at today’s ES3.1 conference call and  
> arrived at a new plan of record:
>
> 1) We concluded that the present diversity of semantics of block  
> nested function declarations among browser implementations probably  
> cannot be replaced with a standard semantics without significant  
> breakage of the web. One compelling use case is the apparent common  
> usage of the difference in IE and FF semantics  in this regard as a  
> browser identification test.
>

Could you please cite a few URLs showing this common usage? It's a  
new one on me.

> 3) We will still include lexically scoped block environments, but  
> only for const declarations. If you want to define a block scoped  
> function, do it using a const whose value is a function expression.
>
So what would this program print in ES3.1?

const C = 42;
function f(x, y) {
   const C = 33;
   if (x) {
     const C = 21;
     return eval(y);
   }
   return C;
}
print(f(true, "C"));

> In a latter revision, we would expect to also add block-scoped let  
> declaration to enable block scoped variables.
>
"latter revision" is spelled E-S-4 :-P.

/be