[sf-perl] OffTopic: Any JavaScript programmers here?

yary not.com at gmail.com
Fri Jul 4 19:25:06 PDT 2008


Keeping this on-list since it's also a general coding question. I
think the issue is shallow vs deep copying an object. When you have a
line like

 var theList = document.getElementById(ListHandle);

then theList is a handle into the list as a whole, and if the elements
change order in the document, then they change in theList as well.
What you need is called a "deep copy", where you walk through the
object's elements/attributes, and copy all those as well.

In general you need to think about how to copy each element as well-
do you want to deep copy recursively all the way down? In this
example, we might, if you're sorting the sublists as well. And we can
get a deep copy by freezing a string copy-

  var origList = theList.innerHTML; // a way in perl: use Storable,
$origList = freeze \@theList;

to set it back

  theList.innerHTML = origList; // in perl, @theList = @{ thaw $origList };


I assume you're still working on this page, as the "sort these" links
are currently out of order- I'll recommend using firebug in ff while
debugging, though there are other page insepection/js debug tools and
if you have one you like stick with it.


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