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A comment on JavaScript once had a JSX-like syntax called E4X. Parent comment

Re:JavaScript once had a JSX-like syntax called E4X by jsjohnst on Saturday March 18, 2017 @02:25PM (#13902719)
It existed in AS3 too. Wasn't widely known to my knowledge though.
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Re:JavaScript once had a JSX-like syntax called E4X by bshimmin on Saturday March 18, 2017 @03:45PM (#13903139)
Thank you - confirmed. I just dug up a copy of Flash CS6 and tried this:

  var val : String = "foo";
  var foo : XML = <foo><bar prop={val} /></foo>;
...and it worked. I swear this wasn't documented anywhere. That said, I just googled a few Flex examples (I never used Flex) and it seems to be common there, so I guess that explains why at least someone knew it existed!
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Re:JavaScript once had a JSX-like syntax called E4X by krilnon on Saturday March 18, 2017 @05:22PM (#13903582)
It's documented. I used to be very fluent in the AS3LR, and I found it in a minute or two here: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionsc...

The formal language specification came fairly late in AS3's useful life, but it also describes the syntax: http://help.adobe.com/livedocs/specs/actionscript/3/as3_spec...

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Re:JavaScript once had a JSX-like syntax called E4X by bshimmin on Saturday March 18, 2017 @06:02PM (#13903744)
Ah, thank you for these. I skimmed the documentation about AS3's XML support and didn't see it there, and I'm not sure "operators" would be a place I would've looked!

I don't know if this would've been a super useful feature for me a decade ago, but it's nice to know it was there anyway.

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Re:JavaScript once had a JSX-like syntax called E4X by jsjohnst on Saturday March 18, 2017 @05:05PM (#13903520)
That's possibly why I knew about it then (for a brief period, I did Flex work ten years ago).
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Re:JavaScript once had a JSX-like syntax called E4X by robinduckett on Saturday March 18, 2017 @05:12PM (#13903545)
I used to do Flex a long time ago, and I love how the frontend dev world is finally catching up to Flash from the late naughties.
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Re:JavaScript once had a JSX-like syntax called E4X by Marazan on Sunday March 19, 2017 @06:55AM (#13906360)
Flash won. The world of Internet development is slowly being remade in Flex's image.

That Adobe abandoned he technology rather that retooling it to target HTML5 is a strategic blunder up there with... I can't actually work out an equivalent.

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