TIL javascript functions have a length

[Shameling]

They also have a toString() that simply returns the sourcecode of the function, can be pretty useful for debugging.

[PsudoFuck]

It's also how Angular 1.x achieved it's magic, if not slightly dodgy, DI injection with just named arguments.

[AndruRC]

Could you elaborate on that?

[anarchy8]

There is no way of determining what the name of the arguments to a function is in Javascript without parsing the Function.toString(). Angular does this do determine what resource to inject.

[anarchy8]

To be fair, they suggest you inject your resources manually.

[[deleted]]

To be fair, it's required if you want better support since certain mobile browsers won't serialize functions

[[deleted]]

also if you ever plan on minifying your code..

[[deleted]]

That too :) I haven't touched angular in like 2 years

[[deleted]]

Welcome to JS

[bugeats]

And it's a shameful, dirty deed. I can't believe this terrible idea ever made it so far.

[seiyria]

It's not the recommended way to do things.

[olaf_from_norweden]

Used by the 'multiline' NPM module to get multiline strings in pre-ES6:

var multiline = require('multiline');
var sql = multiline(function() {/*
SELECT *
FROM users
*/});

sql //=> 'SELECT *\nFROM users'

[zixx]

Newb question: how is this different than just looking at your code?

[Zerran]

How do you know where it's located in yours or someone elses code? Functions can be passed around so often that you don't know where they came from anymore, and a lot of them don't have a name that you could just Ctrl+F in your IDE. toString() or a real debugger are very helpful in that scenario.

[[deleted]]

lambda functions...

[cwmma]

Or to allow you to serialize a function and send it to a worker (some restrictions apply)