Object literals are not interpreted correctly

[davidchambers]

{foo: 'bar'}
  => "bar"
{foo: 'bar', baz: 'quux'}
  => "SyntaxError: Unexpected token ':'"

[davidchambers]

Hmm…

> eval("{foo: 'bar'}")
"bar"

I can't explain this, but apparently parens are required:

> eval("({foo: 'bar'})")
Object
  foo: "bar"

[wjcrowcroft]

Very interesting JavaScript quirk there - for example:

{joss: 'hungover'}  // "hungover"
{joss: 'hungover', javascript: 'being a dick'}  // SyntaxError: Unexpected token :
var thismorning = {joss: 'hungover', javascript: 'being a dick'}  // assigns object

I may be wrong, but in the first two cases the curly braces {} are treated as block delimiters (hence the syntax error), but when used in assignment (=) it's creating a new object.

When you wrap it in brackets (e.g. ({joss: 'hungover'})) the output is the result of the expression contained in the parentheses - that returns an object. I can't remember why.... it just does.

Good catch!

[davidchambers]

Huh. It would appear that the “key” is being interpreted as a label (and the curly brackets as block delimiters, as you say). I've never used a label before, so it's no surprise that I didn't spot the ambiguity.