USING VARIABLE TO REPLACE REDUPLICATE STRINGS

[snandy]

When reading jQuery source code I found many reduplicate strings such as "string", "object". For example, "string" is appears 44 times in jQuery-1.7.2.js. if we use variable to replace it then the compressed file will be more small.

The following is the number of occurrences of each string.

---

"string": 44
"object": 18
"undefined": 18
"input": 17
"fx": 13
"div": 12
"script": 11
"number": 10
"px": 10
"radio": 9
"hide": 9
"none": 9
"width": 9
"show": 9
"checkbox": 8
"toggle": 7
"button": 7
"height": 7
"display": 7
"function": 7
"fxshow": 6
"id": 6
"get": 6
"body": 5
"boolean": 5
"href": 5
"olddisplay": 5
"opacity": 5
"hidden": 5
"type": 4
"GET": 4
".run": 4
"padding": 4
"margin": 4
"fixed": 4
"inline": 4
"border": 4
"static": 3
"marginTop": 3
"parentNode": 3
"marginLeft": 3
"nextSibling": 3
"relative": 3

---

[snandy]

Please, see the  http://jsfiddle.net/HUyQN/2/

[mikesherov]

I like this thought, but what's interesting is that gzip actually might NOT like it. Definitely worth exploring some of the egregious ones like "string", and just seeing what the effect would be

[rwaldron]

Someone could take a look at this post-IIFE removal

[antishok]

Making this change for "string" and "object", grunt says:

Sizes - compared to master
    255642       (-72)  dist/jquery.js                                         
     91985      (-259)  dist/jquery.min.js                                     
     33139        (-2)  dist/jquery.min.js.gz

Is this worth pursuing any further? rwaldron, may I ask what you mean by post-IIFE removal?

(trying to be helpful, but if I'm not, kindly shove me off :P )

[mikesherov]

antishok, thanks for doing the investigative work, but if this only saves us 2 bytes, I think we should scrap the idea. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, gzip is already great at minimizing the impact of repeated strings of text, and your research proves it. I think we can safely close this ticket as wontfix.

Please feel free to tackle any other bugs you'd like, and thanks again for your help!

[dmethvin]

Agreed, and thanks for doing the work antishok!