[szaroubi]

To me, minifaction will rename reallyClearFunctionName("string param") to a("string param"). While obfuscation would also encrypt the "string param" and then decrypt it at runtime. Minification's main purpose is to reduce the size, obfuscation will go one step futher and make it difficult to understand what is going on. Side note, it can be obfuscated but "maxified" (if that is a thing).

Side note: the joke goes that Perl is a write only language as it is difficult to read it and understand it. Some twisted souls decided to create the obfuscated perl content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obfuscated_Perl_Contest

For a list of some of the winners: https://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol4_3/tpj0403-0017.html

[the8472]

Advanced minification might do more optimizations than just shortening names though. In the extreme case you might have a sort of optimizing compiler that performs the equivalent of `-Os` which can make code quite unreadable.

But yes, even that shouldn't be encrypting strings.

[loeg]

Sure. You could also imagine a better minifier compressing string constants to save even more size.