Semicolon insertion¶
ID: js/automatic-semicolon-insertion
Kind: problem
Security severity:
Severity: recommendation
Precision: very-high
Tags:
- quality
- maintainability
- readability
- language-features
- statistical
- non-attributable
Query suites:
- javascript-security-and-quality.qls
Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository
Some statements in JavaScript do not have to be terminated by an explicit semicolon; the parser will implicitly insert a semicolon when it encounters a newline character in such situations. This is a dangerous feature since it can mask subtle errors and confuse readers; it should not be relied on.
Recommendation¶
Make the implicitly inserted semicolon explicit.
Example¶
In the following code snippet, the programmer most likely intended to return an object literal with a single property status.
function f() {
return
{
status: 'OK'
}
}
However, since there is a newline after the return keyword, the parser inserts an implicit semicolon after return; the object literal is then interpreted as a block containing a single statement with the label status. Since it comes right after a return, this block is, of course, never executed, and instead of returning an object literal the function now returns undefined.
To fix this bug, the opening curly brace of the object literal should be put on the same line as the return keyword:
function f() {
return {
status: 'OK'
};
}
References¶
D. Crockford, JavaScript: The Good Parts, Appendix A.3. O’Reilly, 2008.