Entry

How do I use the javascript comment operator, //, in a string constant containing a url, http://...

Jun 12th, 2002 19:14
Jean-Bernard Valentaten, David Carr,

Your question is not quite clear, but I'll try to answer it anyway.

First we need to clarify things. Basically '//' and '/*...*/' are no 
operators (they don't operate anything). They're just sequencess 
telling the parser to ignore whatever comes after (or between them).
Since the parser won't parse the content of a string variable unless 
you use it in an eval() statement, any double-slash (or '/*...*/') that 
is contained in such a variable is "safe" (it will stay where it is).
Now one might say "What about escape-sequences, aren't they parsed?"
Yes they are, but they aren't parsed by the interpreter, but by the 
methods (e.g. write(), alert(), ...).
Q: "Will the methods try to ignore comment-sequences?"
A: No they won't, except for eval(), because eval() starts an instance 
of the interpreter, passing it the content of a variable to be parsed.

So the following line is correct javascript-code and won't cause any 
problems:

var myURL = "http://www.riseofdarkness.de";
alert(myURL);
window.location.href = myURL;

This will assign the URL to myURL, display myURL and then load the page 
at he content of myURL.

HTH,
Jean