Preface

1 Good Parts 1

Why JavaScript? 2

Analyzing JavaScript 3

A Simple Testing Ground 4

2 Grammar 5

Whitespace 5

Names 6

Numbers 7

Strings 8

Statements 10

Expressions 15

Literals 17

Functions 19

3 Objects 20

Object Literals 20

Retrieval 21

Update 22

Reference 22

Prototype 22

Reflection 23

Enumeration 24

Delete 24

Global Abatement 25

4 Functions 26

Function Objects 26

Function Literal 27

Invocation 27

Arguments 31

Return 31

Exceptions 32

Augmenting Types 32

Recursion 34

Scope 36

Closure 37

Callbacks 40

Module 40

Cascade 42

Curry 43

Memoization 44

5 Inheritance 46

Pseudoclassical 47

Object Specifiers 50

Prototypal 50

Functional 52

Parts 55

6 Arrays 58

Array Literals 58

Length 59

Delete 60

Enumeration 60

Confusion 61

Methods 62

Dimensions 63

7 Regular Expressions 65

An Example 66

Construction 70

Elements 72

8 Methods 78

9 Style 94

10 Beautiful Features 98

Appendix A Awful Parts 101

Appendix B Bad Parts 109

Appendix C JSLint 115

Appendix D Syntax Diagrams 125

Appendix E JSON 136

Index 147