Publication

Naming Anonymous JavaScript Functions

Claude Petitpierre
2011
Reports

Abstract

JavaScript developers create programs by calling functions and they use functions to construct objects. JavaScript development tools need to report to developers about those functions and constructors, for example in debugger call-stacks and in object representations. However, most functions are anonymous: developers need not to specify names for functions. Based on our analysis of ten large, widely used JavaScript projects, less than 7% of JavaScript functions are named by developers. After studying examples from these JavaScript projects, we propose \textit{Static Function-Object Consumption}, a principled, automated approach based on local source code analysis for providing names to nameless JavaScript functions. We applied our approach to 90000 anonymous functions that appeared in the analyzed JavaScript project. The approach is successful in naming more than 99% (91% are unique within their file) of anonymous functions while the average length of function names is kept less than 37 characters.

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/6593ff28-70ca-4fe7-b440-9adac4ab40f7

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Claude Petitpierre
2011
Reports

Abstract

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/6593ff28-70ca-4fe7-b440-9adac4ab40f7

About this result

Related concepts (32)

Anonymous function

In computer programming, an anonymous function (function literal, lambda abstraction, lambda function, lambda expression or block) is a function definition that is not bound to an identifier. Anonymous functions are often arguments being passed to higher-order functions or used for constructing the result of a higher-order function that needs to return a function. If the function is only used once, or a limited number of times, an anonymous function may be syntactically lighter than using a named function.

JavaScript

JavaScript (ˈdʒɑːvəskrɪpt), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2023, 98.7% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, often incorporating third-party libraries. All major web browsers have a dedicated JavaScript engine to execute the code on users' devices. JavaScript is a high-level, often just-in-time compiled language that conforms to the ECMAScript standard.

First-class function

In computer science, a programming language is said to have first-class functions if it treats functions as first-class citizens. This means the language supports passing functions as arguments to other functions, returning them as the values from other functions, and assigning them to variables or storing them in data structures. Some programming language theorists require support for anonymous functions (function literals) as well.

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