Why are there "line terminators" at different max values for minified code?

Question

in particular for Google Closure and Uglify.

Uglify uses 32K lines

https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS

while Google uses about 500 lines.

https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/faq#linefeeds

One of them seem to be addressing a ghost issue.

Why such a difference? What are the true considerations regarding maximum length?

Many times when minifying multiple files into a single file, a return is entered to mark separation of those files. — ArrayKnight, Aug 12 '13 at 17:54
https://developers.google.com/closure/compiler/faq#linefeeds — cmbuckley, Aug 12 '13 at 17:57
The real info. here is in the fact that is Uglify's default is 32K and Google's default is 500 ( if it worked ). Does anyone else find this odd? — please_delete_my_account, Aug 12 '13 at 18:04

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

4

From the Closure Compiler docs:

Why are there random line feeds in compiled scripts?

The Closure Compiler intentionally adds line breaks every 500 characters or so. Firewalls and proxies sometimes corrupt or ignore large JavaScript files with very long lines. Adding line breaks every 500 characters prevents this problem. Removing the line breaks has no effect on a script's semantics. The impact on code size is small, and the Compiler optimizes line break placement so that the code size penalty is even smaller when files are gzipped.

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

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answered Aug 12 '13 at 17:58

cmbuckley

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Please just [close as a dupe](http://stackoverflow.com/a/10194153/1048572) :-) – Bergi Aug 12 '13 at 18:03

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 12 '13 at 17:54

0

Sometimes, when you concatenate various files and then optimize + minify them with Google Closure, seemingly random new lines are inserted.

Most likely to indicate the separation between the different files like @ArrayKnight said.

EDIT: You can clearly see in the Google source code that the different files were wrapped in auto-executing anonymous function like this :

(function() {
    // Minified module file here
})();

answered Aug 12 '13 at 17:54

m_vdbeek

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good to note but they do not mark any of the line breaks. – please_delete_my_account Sep 18 '13 at 20:06

Why are there "line terminators" at different max values for minified code?

2 Answers2