561670 - Function declaration in catch block was not added to current execution context's VariableEnvironment.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 434912

(Core :: JavaScript Engine, defect)

Description

[orangejasmine]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

Function declaration in catch block was not added to current execution context's VariableEnvironment.
This is not a severe bug but it seems to break ES5 spec.
IE ,Opera, Chrome, Safari produced the expected result.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Declare function in catch block

abc();
try {
    throw 1;
} catch (e) {
    function abc() { alert(123); }
}
Actual Results:  
ReferenceError: abc is not defined

Expected Results:  
alert popup with text '123'

Comment 1

[Brendan Eich [:brendan]]

No, ES5 and ES3 before it do not specify function declarations as sub-statements. This is an extension, an old one too, where we differ from IE (other engines all followed IE).

In the Harmony edition of ECMAScript (or one of them, probably the first one), the specification will include a production for Statement: FunctionDeclaration. This will bind a block-local named function, with the binding hoisted to top of block.

Marking dup of bug 434912, but there are older bugs than that one to dup. Any editbugs-capable helper who wants to clean up, please feel free.

/be