block scope and function declarations

[Allen Wirfs-Brock]

On Feb 15, 2012, at 9:53 AM, Andy Wingo wrote:

> Thanks for the note, Allen.
> 
> One remaining doubt:
> 
> On Wed, 2012-02-15 at 09:02 -0800, Allen Wirfs-Brock wrote:
>> At the last TC39 meeting it was hypothesized that the block nested
>> function declaration patterns that are actually used inoperably on the
>> web would continue to work if interpreted as lexical (let-like)
>> declarations.
> 
> What about "conditional function definition"?
> 
> E.g.:
> 
>  https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Functions_and_function_scope#Conditionally_defining_a_function
> 
> or Oliver's comments here:
> 
>  https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27226#c5
> 
> It seems like a valid use case that needs an answer.  The answer might
> be, "just use declarations, assignments, and function expressions";
> dunno.

This is precisely what we discussed at the last TC39 meeting.

if (predicate) {
   function foo() {alert("true")}
} else {
   function foo() {alert("false")}
}
foo();

does not work interoperability among existing browsers.  Under the proposed semantics, the above has a separate block scoped binding for foo in each of the if clauses and the outer reference would most likely be a reference error.

What does work interoperability is something like

if (predicate) {
   function foo() {alert("true")}
   foo();
} 
//note no else clause with an alternative foo definition and no reference to foo outside of the block.

If somebody wants to conditionally define a function an appropriate way to do so would be:

let foo;
if (predicate) {
   foo=function foo() {alert("true")};
} else {
   foo=function foo() {alert("false")};
}
foo();

or perhaps

function altFoo1() {alert("true")}
function altFoo2() {alert("false")}
let foo;
if (predicate) {
   foo=altFoo1};
} else {
   foo=altFoo2;
}
foo();

Finally, remember that this is all contingent upon completing web breakage experiments.

Allen