Appendix C. JSLint
What error drives our eyes and ears amiss?
When C was a young programming language, there were several common programming errors
that were not caught by the primitive compilers, so an accessory program called lint was developed that would scan a source file, looking
for problems.
As C matured, the definition of the language was strengthened to eliminate some
insecurities, and compilers got better at issuing warnings. lint is no longer needed.
JavaScript is a young-for-its-age language. It was originally intended to do small
tasks in web pages, tasks for which Java was too heavy and clumsy. But JavaScript is a
very capable language, and it is now being used in larger projects. Many of the features
that were intended to make the language easy to use are troublesome for larger projects.
A lint for JavaScript is needed: JSLint, a JavaScript
syntax checker and verifier.
JSLint is a code quality tool for JavaScript. It takes a source text and scans it. If it finds a problem, it returns a message describing the problem and an approximate location within the source. The problem is not necessarily a syntax error, although it often is. JSLint looks at some style conventions as well as structural problems. It does not prove that your program is correct. It just provides another set of eyes to help spot problems.
JSLint defines a professional subset of JavaScript, a stricter language than that defined by the third edition of the ECMAScript ...
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