function stops running if "console.log()" removed from code - javascript

I encountered this problem few times in different situations.
when I have console.log('something') inside a function, everything works perfect(at least it seems perfect).
when I comment out console.log('something')
it still works but not every time.
is it some kind of bug?
ex:
var object=0
function run()
{
console.log("text")//<---this one makes it work
console.log()//<---not the empty one one
object=new Object()
object.buffer=getBuffer()
..other functions
object.onended=function()
{
run()
..other functions
}
object.start()
}
run()
So this will stop after a while if console.log("text") is removed. and without console.log() line I don't see a way to find a reason. Maybe there is another way?
sure I could let this line be there and let it output some "!" or something. But it feels wrong. Like fixing a tire with duct tape:)
if it helps:
object in this case is AudioBufferSourceNode.
for some reason it cannot be started more than once so it has to be redefined if you want to play next audio track.
I searched for an answer but I failed. So this is actually my first time asking about programming in a forum. So correct me if I express myself badly. And thank you for your time.

Related

Modify Function Output - Inspect Source - Javascript- HTML - Google Chrome

I want to modify the output of the functions (just say RANDOM examples, apologies for any code mistakes):
ng-if=!pfile.isgame
ng-if=! pfile.examplefile
-from false to true before it even has the page has any chance to drop any code on the page. How can I make it so I can append code to the page to the very beginning of the page to force every output of these particular functions to go true, on a live page?
This is definitely possible, I'm not sure where the function would be however the elements you can actually see the arguments on the page and it doesn't not look server sided at all, its just how its done. I read many articles but it many of them have not really helped me.
I am aware of Event Listener Breakpoints, its just the problem if I'm choosing the right one.
Thank you and I really appreciate it just if you can please dum down the explanation for me as even though I do understand HTML and JavaScript to an OK standard, I am still a massive beginner. This is something I always wanted to try out.
Hopefully I have understood your question correctly. There are a couple of options and the answer will depend on whether the functions are declarations or expressions.
If they are declarations, they get hoisted to the top on first pass, so that by the time your code begins execution, the function already exists and you can overwrite it early on.
If it's a function expression, you have to wait until the function expression has been created.
Example 1 (Function Declaration):
I have a function declaration on my page, which returns true if there is a remainder in the calculation, otherwise false. I execute it on page load. The output is false here:
function hasRemainder(first, second) {
return (first % second != 0);
}
console.log(hasRemainder(10, 5));
false
I have now added the Script First Statement breakpoint in DevTools, so that the debugger breaks before any script is run:
I re-open the page and the execution pauses. I now run the following code in the Console tab to override the hasRemainder function so that it always returns true:
hasRemainder = function() {
return true;
}
Finally, I click Play to continue execution. You can long click to select Long Resume, which skips breakpoints for 500ms so that you don't get caught for very single breakpoint thereafter.
true
The output this time is true as you would expect.
Example 2 (Function Expression):
We can't rely on the early breakpoint this time because the function won't exist yet. We need to add the breakpoint just after the function expression has been created.
Search for the functions using Cmd+Opt+F (Mac) or Ctrl+Shift+F (Windows).
When you are in the file with the function expression, put a breakpoint at the end of the function. When the debugger pauses, run the overriding function into the Console, and then press play to continue execution.

Detecting when any variable in a large JS program is set to NaN

I have a large, messy JS codebase. Sometimes, when the app is being used, a variable is set to NaN. Because x = 2 + NaN results in x being set to NaN, the NaN it spreads virally. At some point, after it has spread pretty far, the user notices that there are NaNs all over the place and shit generally doesn't work anymore. From this state, it is very difficult for me to backtrack and identify the source of the NaN (and there could very well be multiple sources).
The NaN bug is also not easily reproducible. Despite hundreds of people observing it and reporting it to me, nobody can tell me a set of steps that lead to the appearance of NaNs. Maybe it is a rare race condition or something. But it's definitely rare and of uncertain origins.
How can I fix this bug? Any ideas?
Two stupid ideas I've thought of, which may not be feasible:
Write some kind of pre-processor that inserts isNaN checks before every time any variable is used and logs the first occurrence of NaN. I don't think this has been done before and I don't know how hard it would be. Any advice would be appreciated.
Run my code in a JS engine that has the ability to set a breakpoint any time any variable is set to NaN. I don't think anything does this out of the box, but how hard would it be to add it to Firefox or Chrome?
I feel like I must not be the first person to have this type of problem, but I can't find anyone else talking about it.
There is probably no solution for your problem aka: break, whenever any variable is set to NaN. Instead, you could try to observe your variables like this:
It was earlier stated, that the Chrome debugger offers conditional breakpoints. But, it also supports to watch expressions. In the Watch-Expressions menu you can set a condition to break, whenever the variable is set to a specific value.
Object.observe is a method that observes changes on a object. You are able to listen to all changes on the object, and call debug when any variable is set to NaN. For example, you could observe all change on the window object. Whenever any variable on the window object is set to NaN, you call debug. Please note, that Object.observe is quite cutting edge and not supported by all browsers (check out the polyfill in this case).
Take this opportunity to write a test case for every function in your code. Perform random testing and find the line of code that can create NaN values.
Another problem of yours is probably how to reproduce this error. Reloading your webpage over and over doesn't make too much sense. You could check out a so called headless browser: It starts an instance of a browser without displaying it. It can be leveraged to perform automatic tests on the website, click some buttons, do some stuff. Maybe you can script it in such a way that it finally reproduces your error. This has the advantage that you don't have to reload your webpage hundreds of times. There are several implementations for headless browsers. PhantomJS is really nice, in my opinion. You can also start a Chrome Debug Console with it (you need some plugin: remote debugger).
Furthermore, please notice that NaN is never equal to NaN. It would be a pity if you finally are able to reproduce the error, but your breakpoints don't work.
If you're doing a good job keeping things off of the global namespace and nesting things in objects, this might be of help. And I will preface this by saying this is by no means a fully complete solution, but at the very least, this should help you on your search.
function deepNaNWatch(objectToWatch) {
'use strict';
// Setting this to true will check object literals for NaN
// For example: obj.example = { myVar : NaN };
// This will, however, cost even more performance
var configCheckObjectLiterals = true;
var observeAllChildren = function observeAllChildren(parentObject) {
for (var key in parentObject) {
if (parentObject.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
var childObject = parentObject[key];
examineObject(childObject);
}
}
};
var examineObject = function examineObject(obj) {
var objectType = typeof obj;
if (objectType === 'object' || objectType === 'function') {
Object.observe(obj, recursiveWatcher);
if (configCheckObjectLiterals) {
observeAllChildren(obj);
}
} if (objectType === 'number' && isNaN(obj)) {
console.log('A wild NaN appears!');
}
};
var recursiveWatcher = function recursiveWatcher(changes) {
var changeInfo = changes[0];
var changedObject = changeInfo.object[changeInfo.name];
examineObject(changedObject);
};
Object.observe(objectToWatch, recursiveWatcher);
}
Call deepNaNWatch(parentObject) for every top level object/function you're using to nest things under as soon as they are created. Any time an object or function is created within a watched object/function, it itself will become watched as well. Any time a number is created or changed under a watched object--remember that typeof NaN == 'number'--it will check if it's NaN, and if so will run the code at console.log('A wild NaN appears!');. Be sure to change that to whatever sort of debugging output you feel will help.
This function would be more helpful if someone could find a way to force it onto the global object, but every attempt I made to do so simply told me I should sit in time out and think about what I've done.
Oh, and if it's not obvious from the above, on a large scale project, this function is bound to make pesky features like "speed" and "efficiency" a thing of the past.
Are your code communicate with your server side, or it is only client side?
You mention that it is rare problem, therfore it may happend only in some browsers (or browsers version) or on any situation which may be hard to reproduce. If we assume that any appearance of nan is problem, and that when it happend user notice bug ("there are NaNs all over the place"), then instead display popup with error, error should contain first occurence of nan (then users may raport it "Despite hundreds of people observing it and reporting it to me"). Or not show it, but send it to server. To do that write simple function which take as agument only one variable and check if variable is NaN,. Put it in your code in sensitive places (sensitive variables). And this raports maybe solate problematic code. I know that this is very dirty, but it can help.
One of your math functions is failing. I have used Number(variable) to correct this problem before. Here is an example:
test3 = Number(test2+test1) even if test1 and test2 appear to be numbers
Yeah man race conditions can be a pain, sounds like what it may be.
Debugging to the source is definitely going to be the way to go with this.
My suggestion would be to setup some functional testing with a focus on where these have been reproduced, set some test conditions with varied timeouts or such and just rerun it until it catches it. Set up some logging process to see that backtrace if possible.
What does your stack look like? I can't give too much analysis without looking at your code but since its javascript you should be able to make use of the browser's dev tools I assume?
If you know locations where the NaNs propagate to, you could try to use program slicing to narrow down the other program statements that influence that value (through control and data dependences). These tools are usually non-trivial to set up, however, so I would try the Object.observe-style answers others are giving first.
You might try WALA from IBM. It's written in Java, but has a Javascript frontend. You can find information on slicer on the wiki.
Basically, if the tool is working you will give it a program point (statement) and it will give you a set of statements that the starting point is (transitively) control- and/or data-dependent on. If you know multiple "infected" points and suspect a single source, you could use the intersection of their slices to narrow down the list (the slice of a program point can often be a very large set of statements).
(was too long for a comment)
While testing you could overwrite ALL Math functions to check if an NaN is being produced.
This will not catch
a = 'string' + 1;
but will catch things like
a = Math.cos('string');
a = Math.cos(Infinity);
a = Math.sqrt(-1);
a = Math.max(NaN, 1);
...
Example:
for(var n Object.getOwnPropertyNames(Math)){
if (typeof Math[n] === 'function') Math[n] = wrap(Math[n]);
}
function wrap(fn){
return function(){
var res = fn.apply(this, arguments);
if (isNaN(res)) throw new Error('NaN found!')/*or debugger*/;
return res;
};
}
I didn't tested, maybe an explicit list of the "wrap"ed methods is better.
BTW, you should not put this into production code.

Problems calling two functions at the same time

I have problems when a I call a function that calls the other function that keep calling back until a puzzle is solved or find no moves.
The thing is that I need to call a function twice but with different values.
I tried storing the values, but as soon as I call the second function wchich calls back, it overrides the values.
the most important pieces of code are here:
function splitways(){
var strsp,aa=dir,bb=xy;
if(nextRock()){
if(xy!=start){
strsp=(aa+""+bb+""+dir+""+xy)*1;
if(!(strsp in arr)){
arr[strsp]=strsp;
caller(dir,xy);
}
}else{
count++;
}
}
}
function caller(num,pos){
var aa=num,bb=pos;
splitways();
//--
dir=aa;
xy=bb;
//--
dir==1?dir=4:dir--;
splitways();
}
Notes, splitways() changes the values of dir and xy, that is why I tried to change them back and then modifing them before the second call to splitways(). But with the first call everything is erased.
I tried everything I can for 2 hours... The best shot I had was to cache them on var aa=num,bb=pos; but that didn't work.
Any ideas are appreciated
Although I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to do with your code, I think you have some of your logic mixed up:
On the first call (I assume you are calling splitways() first), you set "aa=dir" (lets only pay attention to this). When "caller()", it takes the global variable "dir", obviously. Now, in "caller()", you set "aa=num" which translates to "aa=dir". You call splitways again, which then does the exact same thing: "aa=dir". This continues constantly (AKA: until caller() is stopped being called). However, as it goes back through the execution stack, you have, in "caller()", "dir=aa". Now, you already did "aa=num", so "dir=aa" does absolutely nothing since you haven't changed the value of "dir" anywhere that has executed yet.
Eventually, the LATEST "caller()" call will execute the "dir==1?dir=4:dir--" line, but when that function finishes and the execution returns to the SECOND TO LAST "caller()" call, it resets "dir=aa", so dir is never actually changed until the VERY last call (the first "caller()" execution that happened).
If that made absolutely no sense, good. There has got to be a better way for you to do what you are trying to do. Maybe I can help with that?

A "too much recursion" error in Firefox only sometimes?

I have a pretty simple thing I'm doing with javascript and basically only sometimes will javascript give me a "too much recursion" error.
The code in question:
if(pageLoad===undefined){
var pageLoad=function(){};
}
var pageLoad_uniqueid_11=pageLoad;
var pageLoad=function(){
pageLoad_uniqueid_11();
pageLoad_uniqueid_12();
};
var pageLoad_uniqueid_12=function(){
alert('pageLoad');
};
$(document).ready(function(){
pageLoad();
});
(yes I know there are better way of doing this. This is difficult to change though, especially because of ASP.Net partial postbacks which aren't shown).
Anyway, when the too much recursion error happens, it continues to happen until I restart Firefox. when I restart Firefox it all works as normal again. How do I fix this?
I've also made a jsbin example
Update
Ok I've found out how to reliably reproduce it in our code, but it doesn't work for the jsbin example. If I create a new tab and go to the same page(have two tabs of the same address) and then refresh the first tab two times then I get this error consistently. We are not using any kind of session or anything else that I can think of that could cause such a problem to only occur in one tab!
Update 2
Not as reliable as I thought, but it definitely only occurs when more than one tab of the same page is open. It'll occur every few reloads of one of the tabs open
I've also updated my code to show an alert when pageLoad(the if statement) is initially undefined and when it is initially defined. Somehow, both alerts are showing up. This code is not duplicated in the rendered page and there is no way that it is being called twice. It is in a top level script element not surrounded by a function or anything! My code ends up looking like
if(pageLoad===undefined){
var pageLoad=function(){};
alert('new');
} else {
alert('old');
}
The code in question -- by itself -- should never result in an infinite recursion issue -- there is no function-statement and all the function objects are eagerly assigned to the variables. (If pageload is first undefined it will be assigned a No-Operation function, see next section.)
I suspect there is additional code/events that is triggering the behavior. One thing that may cause it is if the script/code is triggered twice during a page lifetime. The 2nd time pageload will not be undefined and will keep the original value, which if it is the function that calls the other two functions, will lead to infinite recursion.
I would recommend cleaning up the approach -- and having any issues caused by the complications just disappear ;-) What is the desired intent?
Happy coding.
This is just some additional info for other people trying to look for similar "too much recursion" errors in their code. Looks like firefox (as an example) gets too much recursion at about 6500 stack frames deep in this example: function moose(n){if(n%100 === 0)console.log(n);moose(n+1)};moose(0) . Similar examples can see depths of between 5000 and 7000. Not sure what the determining factors are, but it seems the number of parameters in the function drastically decrease the stack frame depth at which you get a "too much recursion" error. For example, this only gets to 3100:
function moose(n,m,a,s,d,fg,g,q,w,r,t,y,u,i,d){if(n%100 === 0)console.log(n);moose(n+1)};moose(0)
If you want to get around this, you can use setTimeout to schedule iterations to continue from the scheduler (which resets the stack). This obviously only works if you don't need to return something from the call:
function recurse(n) {
if(n%100 === 0)
setTimeout(function() {
recurse(n+1)
},0)
else
recurse(n+1)
}
Proper tail calls in ECMAScript 6 will solve the problem for some cases where you do need to return something from calls like this. Until then, for cases with deep recursion, the only answers are using either iteration, or the setTimeout method I mentioned.
I came across this error. The scenario in my case was different. The culprit code was something like this (which is simple concatenation recessively)
while(row)
{
string_a .= row['name'];
}
I found that JavaScript throws error on 180th recursion. Up till 179 loop, the code runs fine.
The behaviors in Safaris is exactly the same, except that the error it shows is "RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded." It throws this error on 180 recursion as well.
Although this is not related to function call but it might help somebody who are stuck with it.
Afaik, this error can also appear if you state a wrong parameter for your ajax request, like
$.getJSON('get.php',{cmd:"1", elem:$('#elem')},function(data) { // ... }
Which then should be
elem:$('#elem').val()
instead.
This will also cause the "too much recursion" issue:
class account {
constructor() {
this.balance = 0; // <-- property: balance
}
set balance( amount ) { // <-- set function is the same name as the property.
this.balance = amount; // <-- AND property: balance (unintended recursion here)
}
}
var acc = new account();
Using unique names is important.
Ok, so why is this happening?
In the set function it isn't actually setting the property to amount, instead it's calling the set function again because in the scope of the set function it is the same syntax for both setting the property AND calling the set function.
Because in that scope this is the same as account and (account OR this).balance = amount can both call the set function OR set the property.
The solution to this is to simply change the name of either the property or the set function in any way (and of course update the rest of the code accordingly).

How can dynmically change a line of a JavaScript function?

Suppose I had the following function:
function alertMesg()
{
alert("This ok function alerts message!");
}
Now at run time I would like to change the alertMesg function to do something else. My thought was to do somehting like this.
var temp = window.alertMesg.toString.replace("ok","great")
temp = temp.replace('function alertMesg()',"");
window.alertMesg = new Function(temp);
Basically, the problem is I have no control over the source in the alertMesg function. I would like to change the function, but I can't actually change the source of it because it is produced server side. That being said, I need it to act differently.
PS: I forgot to mention an important part: I have to keep most of the function. I can't just replace the function out right. I have to keep 95% of the function the way it is, and change the other five percent.
#Barlow Tucker, quixoto, pekka
Thanks, for the interest.
Basically, I don't think the proxy idea will work because I am not just adding functionality, I am changing the functionality of the code. I want for example, the third line of the function to be different. In my real life example I have to add a line right in the middle of a function.
If you must replace the content of a function, it is possible:
function alertMesg()
{
alert ("This ok function alerts my message!");
}
alertMesg(); // alerts "This ok function alerts my message!"
// do whatever you want to the function here
var temp = alertMesg.toString();
temp = temp.replace('my', 'your');
// now replace the original function
alertMesg=new Function(temp.substring(temp.indexOf('{')+1,temp.lastIndexOf('}')));
alertMesg(); // alerts "This ok function alerts your message!"
This probably isn't the best way to do what you're trying to achieve, but I can't really suggest anything else unless you provide more details.
Dynamic code replacement like you're suggesting might work in some cases, but it's a scary road to go down-- fragile, one wrong step and you're busted, and it quickly becomes a maintenance nightmare.
As a commenter said, your cleaner bet is to just wrap the native window.alert and then do the right thing when the string you care about comes through, per the answer here:
JavaScript: Overriding alert()
(Insert standard comment here about how you should get your server side people on the same page/team as you on this so you don't need to hack around your own page.)
UPDATE: You're not asking about alert, you're asking about this problem generally. Yes, you could what others are suggesting. But if you have the original code for the function, why not just replace it entirely? If the function you want is a global function called foo(), you can run JS that does:
window.foo = function() {
// The stuff I know is there (A)
...
// Some new stuff I want to change (B)
...
// More stuff I know is there (C)
}
Which will throw away the original and replace it with your version. This would work reasonably well, although "monkey patching" the stuff in the page definitely comes with some maintenance headaches.
I will definitely note here that if you can't do this for some reason and thus insist on doing textual code replacement in the middle of existing functions, you're abusing the language/environment for the purposes of maintainable anything, and you are truly screwed in multiple ways.

Categories