SourceForge Project

Setting Up JavaScript Lint

You can run JavaScript Lint several ways:

• You can integrate it into your IDE, such as Visual Studio, SciTE, or any other IDE supporting external tools. When JavaScript Lint finds an error, your IDE takes you directly to the line containing the error.

• You can run it through Windows Explorer, which Windows programmers may prefer.

• You can use the command line to integrate into your build system, or maybe you're a Linux programmer and simply prefer the command line!

Additionally, if you are a software developer, you may want to integrate into your Windows program or run it from your PHP website to take advantage of the full power of JavaScript Lint.

Disable Warnings with Control Comment

JavaScript Lint has limited support for control comments. To disable warnings in part of your JavaScript file, you can add the following comments:

/*jsl:ignore*/
(code that fires warnings)
/*jsl:end*/

To ignore all warnings in a file, simply place /*jsl:ignoreall*/ at the top of the file.

Note that this should only be used as a short-term solution for code that you maintain. If this is caused by a bug or missing feature in JavaScript Lint, please report the problem to Info<at>JavaScriptLint.com.

Option Explicit

JavaScript Lint can optionally check for variables, functions, and objects that don't exist, much like Visual Basic's "option explicit." In the interest of making JavaScript Lint accessible to the average programmer, this powerful feature is disabled by default. Although this feature requires more work to understand and implement, it provides a higher level of protection against coding errors.

A variable that is not explicitly declared has a global scope. For example, if a function uses a counter variable and calls another function that uses a counter variable by the same name, unless these functions use the var keyword to declare the variable, the two functions will be accessing and modifying the same variable. This almost never produces the expected behavior.

Here's what it takes to set up this feature:

• The check for undeclared identifiers is enabled on a per-file basis with a /*jsl:option explicit*/ comment within a script. To enforce the use of option explicit, you can modify your configuration file to warn against scripts that do not use this feature.
   
• If a script references a variable, function, or object from another script, you will need to add a /*jsl:import PathToOtherScript*/ comment in your script. This tells JavaScript Lint to check for items declared in the other script. Relative paths are resolved based on the path of the current script.
   
• Your script may also reference global objects that are provided by the runtime (e.g. Firefox or Windows Scripting Host). For example, the script in a web page may reference the global window object. Add the line "+define window" to your configuration file to tell JavaScript Lint about this global.

JavaScript Lint does not validate object properties. They do not use the var keyword and cannot be validated without executing the script.

The warnings for undeclared identifiers will appear after other warnings that may occur in the script. This is by design, since the entire script must be examined before identifiers can be called undefined.

Switches and Breaks

By default, JavaScript Lint warns against missing break's in switch statements. Sometimes, however, break statements are intentionally excluded. To indicate this, use the /*jsl:fallthru*/ control comment:

switch (i) {
  case 1:
    break;
  case 2:
    /*jsl:fallthru*/
  case 3:
    break;
}

Empty Statements

By default, JavaScript Lint warns against empty statements. However, empty statements are sometimes intention. To indicate this, use the /*jsl:pass*/ control comment:

while (!hasResponse()) {
    /*jsl:pass*/
}

Advanced Output Format

The following output formats may also be used:

• __ERROR_PREFIX__ indicates the type of message
• __ERROR_MSG__ indicates the message contents
• __ERROR__ indicates the full error including the error type and the message.

If the output format is prefixed with "encode:", all backslashes, single and double quotes, tabs, carriage returns, and line breaks will be escaped as \\, \' and \", \t, \r, and \n (respectively).

JavaScript Lint is sponsored by Matthias Miller.