Alan Storm's comments in response to my answer regarding the with statement got me thinking. I've seldom found a reason to use this particular language feature, and had never given much thought to how it might cause trouble. Now, I'm curious as to how I might make effective use of with, while avoiding its pitfalls.
Where have you found the with statement useful?
I created a "merge" function which eliminates some of this ambiguity with the with statement:
if (typeof Object.merge !== 'function') {
Object.merge = function (o1, o2) { // Function to merge all of the properties from one object into another
for(var i in o2) { o1[i] = o2[i]; }
return o1;
};
}
I can use it similarly to with, but I can know it won't affect any scope which I don't intend for it to affect.
Usage:
var eDiv = document.createElement("div");
var eHeader = Object.merge(eDiv.cloneNode(false), {className: "header", onclick: function(){ alert("Click!"); }});
function NewObj() {
Object.merge(this, {size: 4096, initDate: new Date()});
}