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by leeoniya 2448 days ago
it reduces code size.

d.getHours();d.getHours(); cannot be compressed but d[getHours]();d[getHours](); can compress to d[a]();d[a]().

do this enough times and you've saved 1kb.

you should see the kinds of compression hacks the Preact team does ;)
2 comments
e12e 2448 days ago
Is that relevant with gzip enabled for transport? I'm assuming (possibly wrongly!) that such hacks do little in terms of parsing speed/AST complexity.

I suppose it's possible the js runtime might also benefit for some of these modifications?

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pintxo 2448 days ago
Don't js compressors do this sort of optimization on their own?
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leeoniya 2448 days ago
if you enable a bunch of unsafe options they can do some of them, but they tend to err on the safe side when it comes to native built-in methods like these on Date objects.

also, some minifiers optimize for gzip size where the effect is not as drastic, but the browser still has to parse the un-gzipped source afterwards. it depends on the weighted costs built into each minifier.

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