gistfile1.js

/*

 Explanation:

 I was seeing some bizarre behaviour in a program I was developing. After
 fruitlessly debugging my code, I distilled the crazyness down to this.
 This script is full of WTF. Have a what the code is doing vs what the script
 is printing.

 Try out on node master@HEAD. Script seems to work up to v0.1.97 of node.
 Anything after that such as HEAD on master don't work on the platforms I
 tested (osx, solaris, linux).

 Solaris
 -------
 node tag v0.1.94 - works
 node tag v0.1.97 - works
 node master      - doesn't work

 OSX
 ---
 node tag v0.1.96 - works

 Linux
 -----

 node v0.1.97     - works
 node master      - doesn't work

*/

sys = require('sys');

puts = sys.puts;
inspect = sys.inspect;

globalHash = {};

Shazbot = function (args) {
  this.objectHash = {};
}

Shazbot.prototype.myFunction = function() {
  // if you set this value to a non numeric value it works

//   var id = 'abcdefg'; // if we use this it will work
  var id = '22345678';

  puts("objectHash:"+inspect(this.objectHash));
  puts("globalHash:"+inspect(globalHash));

  globalHash[id] = {};

  puts("This will fail the second time we call this function: " + inspect(globalHash));
  // Why does this fail??? globalHash[id] was just set above!
  globalHash[id]['foo'] = 'foo';

  this.objectHash[id] = { };
  this.objectHash[id]['foo'] = 'foo';

  puts("\nThis should print { '" + id + "': { 'foo': 'foo' }\n");
  puts("objectHash:"+inspect(this.objectHash));
  puts("globalHash:"+inspect(globalHash));
}

a = new Shazbot();
a.myFunction();
a.myFunction();

gistfile2.txt