184003 - Javascript functions wont recurse.

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Patrick Cummings]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20021206 Chimera/0.6+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20021206 Chimera/0.6+

This doesn't work.  Javascript functions in Mozilla and Chimera wont recurse
like they do in Explorer.

	readObj(window, 3);
	function readObj(thisObj, rlvl) {
		rlvl--;
		document.write("Stepping into object...\n");
		document.write("<ul>\n");
		for (var obj in thisObj) {
			document.write("<li>");
			try {
				document.write(obj+" ("+typeof(thisObj[obj])+") ");
				if (typeof(thisObj[obj]) == "object") {
					if (rlvl > 0) {
						document.write("\n");
						readObj(thisObj[obj], rlvl);
					} else {
						document.write("-- Object too deep!");
					}
				} else {
					if (typeof(thisObj[obj]) == "string" || typeof(thisObj[obj]) == "boolean"
|| typeof(thisObj[obj]) == "number") {
						if (thisObj[obj].length > 100) {
							document.write("= String too long!");
						} else {
							document.write("= "+thisObj[obj]);
						}
					} else {
						document.write("-- Unknown object!");
					}
				}
			}
			catch(err) {
				document.write("Error ("+err+")");
			}
			document.write("<\/li>\n");
		}
		document.write("<\/ul>\n");
	}


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Just try the code I pasted in the details.  
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
Not the expected results.

Expected Results:  
It should have recursed.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

>		for (var obj in thisObj) {

This will throw an error if |thisObj == null|.  Which it will be quite often
with that code.  (IE does not throw the error, in violation of the ECMA language
spec).

Comment 2

[Patrick Cummings]

I'm sorry, I guess I didn't make the error quite clear enough.  I was being 
rushed at the time of the post.  To clarify, the error is not due to a "null" 
object, I'm well aware of those types of problems.  The error lies in the 
recursive function call you see on approximately line 11 of the readObj 
function.  When it detects an object of type "object", it calls the readObj 
function again to read that object.  Explorer handles this just fine.  But both 
Mozilla and Chimera generate an error of "ReferenceError: readObj is not 
defined".  Hence it wont recurse.

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Attachment: testcase

Are you seeing the problem with this HTML file?  If not, how does it differ
from the testcase you have? (this file works fine for me, Linux build
2002-12-04-22 trunk)

Comment 4

[Patrick Cummings]

LOL.  Sorry.  I can't help but laugh at my idiocy on this one.  I tried your 
code, tried mine, tried yours again, tried mine again, tried a few variations 
of mine, and had no problems.  So I pasted the code back into my original 
page and tried it again and still got the error.  I racked my brain on this 
one for the next 24 hours before I realized what was actually going on.  
Turns our the error I was getting was acurate and correct.  The reason 
why the function "readObj" was not defined is because the script was 
replacing the page when it ran (it was being called after the page was fully 
loaded) and thus removing the scripts.  The first loop could run because 
the script code had been loaded, but once the first write statement 
occured, it wiped out the script code.  The current segment could continue 
because it was already loaded, but in order for it to recurse and run the 
function again, it needed to recompile the code each time through.  
Unfortunately, the code was already gone from the write statement.  So, 
after almost 92 hours of mental torture, it came down to mental 
retardation.  Sorry for the false report.  (Ooops)