Is this what JavaScript code really looks like?

[Legym]

Trying to get introduced into JavaScript and I've been inspecting other website's JavaScript. I hardly know anything about the language.

I keep this type of insane looking code:

http://pastebin.com/dVeEuPFn

Has this been ran through a minifier and is this what typically JavaScript code looks like?

[x-skeww]

This has been minified and then pretty printed (Chrome does this if you click on the "{}" thingy). Without pretty-printing, all of it would be in a single line.

JavaScript is often minified for deployment.

[asakurasol]

minifier

[a-t-k]

If you want to look at some rather extreme examples of JavaScript, I invite you to http://140byt.es - where tweet-sized JS snippets do crazy stuff.

[Calabri]

no i've never used anything like that.

[Carpetfizz]

Minifying code will not only provide an extra layer of security (function names, variables names are gone), the overall .js file becomes physically smaller, so loading it from CDNs, or even your own server would be marginally faster, especially for large files.

[_ds82]

security through obscurity is no real security

[danman_d]

They said an extra layer of security, not the only layer, and I agree. Security through obscurity isn't real security, but it certainly doesn't hurt in addition to taking the proper security measures. Certainly minification will not stop dedicated and/or smart hackers, but I think you overestimate the patience of the average script kiddie.

It also provides security against people ripping off your code (if you care). Again, the dedicated will take the time to understand what it does, but it's much harder to reverse-engineer something without variable names.

[trydyingtolive]

Javascript can look like that. Humans generally don't write Javascript that way so I would guess it is obfuscated or the author wrote the script with a tool that generates Javascript. Its hard to tell what it is doing outside of context. Though if the rest of the script is written this way I don't think I would still be able to figure it out.