Inconsistent JS hints depending on whitespace

[dangoor]

Go to the Tern demo page

Reformat the CTor function with newlines:

function CTor() {
  this.size = 10;
}

Then, add another line to the function, with the new line properly aligned:

function CTor() {
  this.size = 10;
  this.|
}

ctrl-space with the cursor where the | character is above will produce the correct results.

function CTor() {
  this.size = 10;
 this.|
}

However, if the line is not aligned with the line above (as in the example above), ctrl-space produces general results rather than results specific to CTor.

This is likely low priority, because most people align their code. However, I do wonder if there are cases in which whitespace sensitivity could actually trip up Tern.

[marijnh]

The error-correcting parser is whitespace sensitive, and thus sometimes produces odd results. I have some plans on how it could be improved (with a separate brace-balancing pass), but it'd require some major work that I currently don't have the time for.

[dangoor]

OK, that's good to know. This issue alone is not worth "major work", I should think.

[bfricka]

I haven't looked at the "error-correcting parser" so this may be stupid, but could you potentially pull in a consistent beautifier (like UglifyJS 2) and normalize input formatting accordingly before handing it to the parser? That way you can make better assumptions about the structure...

[marijnh]

No, that does not help -- a beautifier needs to parse the code first, and if it's not syntactically valid, it can't beautify it. The problem exists in the parsing of broken syntax.

[bfricka]

Ahh, I see now. Knew I should have read the code first.