Whitespace Before Dot (method Call) Allowed In Javascript?

I want to use the following syntax in Javascript: var bar = foo.replace(/really long regex/, something) .replace(/another really long regex/, something) .

Solution 1:

Yes, Javascript ignores whitespace.

Although if you are going to ignore whitespace you need to be sure and use semicolons to end your expressions. Semicolons are not required, but if they are not used, javascript uses carriage returns to separate commands. Which can cause inconsistent behavior if you're not expecting it.

I have done it many times in my javascript code, since when I'm writing pretty code I don't like to let it go beyond 80 characters.

Take a look at the emcascript standard https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ecma-international.org%2Fpublications%2Ffiles%2FECMA-ST%2FECMA-262.pdf

Line Terminators (which is what your concerned with) are addressed on page 25 of the pdf(page 15 is printed on the sheet). All of section 7 is about formatting, you'll probably find a definition of why it works there(yep I'm lazy and don't want to read the whole section :) ).

Hope that helps!

Solution 2:

You can definitely do this but I would be careful. To quote the wikipedia entry - "whitespace in JavaScript source can directly impact semantics". See JavaScript Syntax -Whitespace and Semicolons.

Solution 3:

Yes it is I was not able to find any documentation but it is valid. In your case you could loop over the regexps instead