JavaScript Object Notation

I use Javascript quite a bit for my i-Doc site and some of the projects I work on. I really like the language because it's syntax is comfortable and you can do a bunch with it without having to know a lot about it. And getting stuff done quickly is pretty much the whole reason for programming.

But the "looseness" of Javascript can also tempt you to fall into programming habits that don't scale well.

When I first started learning Javascript I approached it as a purely function based language. Probably because I was already familiar with SCL (Screen Control Language) in SAS/AF and that's what I likened Javascript to. But anyways, all my JS code looked like this:

function doSomething(someVal) {
  var someLocal;
  // do some stuff
  return rValue;
}

function doSomethingElse(someVal) {
  var someLocal;
  // do some other stuff
  return rValue;
}

And I would store it in a file and include the file as a link in my header tags.
This works perfectly well and so I had no incentive to change it. Until I started getting lots of functions in lots of files. It doesn't scale well. But by changing the coding style just a little bit, I am able to write my JS code so it is much easier to maintain. Using JavaScript Object Notation (or JSON) I can fake namespaces. This lets me take more control over the design of my JS code. Using JSON the above would be rewritten:

myNameSpace = {
  doSomething function(someVal) {
     var someLocal;
     // do some stuff
     return rValue;
  } ,
  doSomethingElse function(someVal) {
     var someLocal;
     // do some other stuff
     return rValue;
  }
};

Then when I want to use one of the functions, I just preface it with the object name ( myNameSpace.doSomething(withThis); )
I usually choose the object name to be the same as the name of the javascript file. That way I avoid name collisions, and I can quickly find where a function is defined if I need to look at the source code.

Certainly, this is not a great leap forward in web programming. But I still see so much function-style javascript online that I thought it would be useful to pass it along.

SAS Macro Nesting

I'd like to share a nifty SAS option that will help tremendously with debugging SAS macros. The mprintNest system option will show nesting information in your log. This is a big improvement over mprint that showed which macro you were in, but made it nearly impossible to tell which macros may have contained the macro call.

With mprintNest you can see exactly where you are in the executing macro stack.

You must use mprintNest with mprint. It cannot be set on it's own.