I'm testing in internet explorer 8 on windows XP and hitting into a tedious bug. I am trying to test strings with a regular expression that works fine in firefox and fine tested independently in the ie8 console.
But when it through my closure function the string acts strangely
[Edit] More detailed code: Not as nice or clean as the earlier snippet.
var m_TableSorter = (function() {
// static reg expression string and array for ordering dates
var dateRegEx = new RegExp(
"(jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|jul|aug|sep|oct|nov|dec)\\s\\d{4}");
...
...
function greaterThan(left, right) {
window["globalLeft"] = left;
window["globalRight"] = right;
var a = $.trim(left.toLowerCase());
var b = $.trim(right.toLowerCase());
window["globalA"] = a.toString();
window["globalReg"] = dateRegEx;
if (dateRegEx.test(a) && dateRegEx.test(b)) {
var yearA = parseInt(a.substring(4,8), 10);
var yearB = parseInt(b.substring(4,8), 10);
if (yearA > yearB) {
return true;
} else if (yearB > yearA) {
return false;
} else {
/* ... */
var monthA =
$.inArray(a.substring(0,3).toUpperCase(), monthArray);
var monthB =
$.inArray(b.substring(0,3).toUpperCase(), monthArray);
m_Debug.tryAssert(monthA >= 0, "Date string malformed");
m_Debug.tryAssert(monthB >= 0, "Date string malformed");
if (monthA > monthB) {
return true;
} else {
return false;
}
}
}
//alert("NONDATE");
if ( a.toUpperCase() >= b.toUpperCase() ) {
return true;
}
return false;
}
function mergeArrays(pr_left, pr_right, pr_compareFunction, pr_rowIndex)
{
m_Debug.debugUtilityFunction(arguments);
var results = new Array();
var obj;
/* Merges in order so that if right > left then the results is
* [left right] otherwise the result is [right left] (Dependant on
* ascending or descending order)
*/
while (pr_left.length > 0 || pr_right.length > 0) {
if (pr_left.length > 0 && pr_right.length > 0) {
window["globalLeft1"] = $(pr_left[0].children[pr_rowIndex]).text().toString();
window["globalRight1"] = $(pr_right[0].children[pr_rowIndex]).text().toString();
var bool = pr_compareFunction(
$.trim($(pr_left[0].children[pr_rowIndex]).text()),
$.trim($(pr_right[0].children[pr_rowIndex]).text())
);
if (bool) {
results.push(pr_left.shift());
} else {
results.push(pr_right.shift());
}
} else if (pr_left.length > 0) {
for (obj in pr_left) {
results.push(pr_left[obj]);
}
break;
} else if (pr_right.length > 0) {
for (obj in pr_right) {
results.push(pr_right[obj]);
}
break;
}
}
return results;
}
For the mergeArrays function pr_left & pr_right are jQuery list of TR objects. and im comparing the text in the pr_rowIndex-th cell of the row for two rows.
pr_compareFunction is greaterThan.
dateRegEx.test(a) returns false because the string a is bugged.
Testing in the ie8 console it tells me that
globalA.toLowerCase() == "sep 2010"
returns false. In this case alert(globalA) has shown "sep 2010" and alert(globalLeft) has shown "Sep 2010". I've checked .length on both to be 8 as expected.
globalLeft1 == globalLeft seems to be true but neither are equal to normal strings.
I can't see at all why JScript cannot recognise these two strings. reproducing these exact steps in the console works as expected.
[Further Edit]
Turn's out different implementation of javascript treat non breaking space characters as either a space character class or non-space character class. Whether this is a bug or working as intended is open to discussion.
