JavaScript-Special characters

[AJAXnub]

I recently found out what the ? sign means in javascript.. is there anything else like that to shorten code?

Thanks!

[mrhoo]

The delete key is the best javascript optimizer.

[AJAXnub]

I'm not uploading any site to the internet, so the spaces don't bother me too much right now... This is basically out of curiosity, and not trying to reduce load time.

[WolfShade]

I recently found out what the ? sign means in javascript.. is there anything else like that to shorten code?

Thanks!

What.. that the ? is used in ternery operations between the condition and the true/false commands?

Well.. off the top of my head, the only other shortcut I can think of is +=.

a = a + b concatenation can be shortened to a += b. Not sure if it works for math.

When incrementing a number, instead of i=i+1, you can use i++; same thing for subtracting, i--.

[savvykms]

You can write compounded statements, e.g. +=, -=, /=, *=, etc.
You can use the ternary operator (C?T:F).
You can take out lines of code by combining statements together when possible, usually done with string parsing.
You can cut out variables that are only used for storage for a single get operation.
You can eliminate loops and function calls for single statements.

[AJAXnub]

hmm.. can you explain the last three? I'm not very good with terminology...

[savvykms]

//instead of
var str = "test";
str += " test2";
document.write(str);
//use
document.write("test test2"); 

//instead of
function output_text(text) {
document.getElementById('someplace').innerHTML = text;
}
//and somewhere else
output_text("test");
//just use
document.getElementById("someplace").innerHTML = "test";
//or have a global variable for "someplace" and use
document.getElementById(someplace_id).innerHTML = text; 

[AJAXnub]

o.O I didn't know doing that was bad.. Thanks!

[savvykms]

it just adds in some extra overhead when calling functions or adding statements. Not very noticible, but it creates speed where maintainability was.