SlimIt 0.4 released: block braces removal

SlimIt 0.4 is released and it features block braces removal during minification process.

If a block statement contains only one source element then curly braces around that statement are removed by SlimIt:

with (obj) {
    a = b;
}

after minification will become:

with(obj)a=b;

And

if (true) {
    x = 1;
} else {
    x = 0;
}

will become

if(true)x=1;else x=0;

There is one case where braces removal gets tricky. Take a look at the following JavaScript code:

if ( obj ) {
    for ( n in obj ) {
        if ( v === false) {
            break;
        }
    }
} else {
    for ( ; i < l; ) {
        if ( nv === false ) {
            break;
        }
    }
}

If we blindly remove all block braces result will be the following (output is indented and formatted to illustrate the point):

if (obj)
    for (n in obj)
        if (v === false)
            break;
else
    for (; i < l; )
        if (nv === false)
            break;

but it will be interpreted by a JavaScript parser as

if (obj)
    for (n in obj)
        if (v === false)
            break;
        else
            for (; i < l; )
                if (nv === false)
                    break;

because else part will be associated with the closest if and that’s not what was described by the original pre-miniified source code. Because of that the minifier will convert such construct to the following form to avoid ambiguity but still performing minification where possible (indented for illustration purpose):

if (obj) {
    for (n in obj)
        if (v === false)
            break;
} else
    for (; i < l; )
        if (nv === false)
            break;

And this is how it’ll look like in minified form:

if(obj){for(n in obj)if(v===false)break;}else for(;i<l;)if(nv===false)break;')

Here are some new numbers for jsmin, rJSmin, and SlimIt minification of jQuery 1.6.1:

P.S: After minification by SlimIt I ran a test suite that comes with jQuery against the minified version and got the same results as with official minified version.

Tagged as: compilers, javascript, slimit