Not able to use semicolons for proper JavaScript in blocks

[goloroden]

Supposed I have the following file index.vash:

@html.extend('layout', function (model) {
  @html.block('content', function (model) {
    <p>Hallo Welt!</p>
  })
})

Then the code is "broken" due to missing semicolons at the end of the two lines containing the }) characters. But if I add them I won't get the result I'd like to, as they are sent to the client instead.

How to fix this?

[kirbysayshi]

Could you clarify what you mean by "broken"? You mean rely on ASI as opposed to manual semicolon insertion?

It was a trade off I made to make the parser/compiler slightly less complex. Perhaps I should revisit this. Are you running into a tooling issue, aside from personal compulsions :) ?

[goloroden]

Hm, okay, perhaps broken was the wrong word.

Let's say it like this: If I insert the (missing) semicolon, it is not ignored, but Vash sends it as normal output to the HTML. So it is not possible to use final semicolons (or I am missing something here).

And, no it's not a tooling issue, just personal style ;-)

[kirbysayshi]

No, you're not missing anything, unfortunately that's a limitation in vash. It's very difficult for vash to know the difference between @something.cb(function() {}); and @();, where a semicolon should be consumed by the first and should be output by the second. In both cases it just knows that an expression is ending (signified by the )).

I could put in an exception/hack specifically for blocks containing callbacks, but I've resisted since it would break consistency (aside from within a block, all semicolons are treated as content).

[kirbysayshi]

I've been thinking about this some more, and I think it's actually impossible for vash to know when a trailing semicolon is meant to be code or content. However, you can force the semicolons to be parsed as code by wrapping the layout calls in an anonymous code "block":

@{
  html.extend('layout', function (model) {
    @html.block('content', function (model) {
      <p>Hallo Welt!</p>
    });
  });
}

Going to close this for now, as the case of @something.hey(function() { return 'yo' }); (semicolon should be content) is ambiguously close to @html.block('layout', function() {}); (semicolon should be code).