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JavaScript Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition
book

JavaScript Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition

by David Flanagan
October 2002
Intermediate to advanced
136 pages
2h 44m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from JavaScript Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1. The JavaScript Language

JavaScript is a lightweight, object-based scripting language that can be embedded in HTML pages. This book starts with coverage of the core JavaScript language, followed by material on client-side JavaScript, as used in web browsers. The final portion of this book is a quick-reference for the core and client-side JavaScript APIs.

Syntax

JavaScript syntax is modeled on Java syntax, Java syntax, in turn, is modeled on C and C++ syntax. Therefore, C, C++, and Java programmers should find that JavaScript syntax is comfortably familiar.

Case sensitivity

JavaScript is a case-sensitive language. All keywords are in lowercase. All variables, function names, and other identifiers must be typed with a consistent capitalization.

Whitespace

JavaScript ignores whitespace between tokens. You may use spaces, tabs, and newlines to format and indent your code in a readable fashion.

Semicolons

JavaScript statements are terminated by semicolons. When a statement is followed by a newline, however, the terminating semicolon may be omitted. Note that this places a restriction on where you may legally break lines in your JavaScript programs: you may not break a statement across two lines if the first line can be a complete legal statement on its own.

Comments

JavaScript supports both C and C++ comments. Any amount of text, on one or more lines, between /* and */ is a comment, and is ignored by JavaScript. Also, any text between // and the end of the current line is a comment, ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596004117Errata Page