Question

i.e. what’s the equivalent of the browser’s “window” object, to which top level functions are attached?

The following code succeeds in the REPL:

var assert = require('assert');
function foo() { };
assert.ok(foo == this["foo"]);

However in a script (or a module) it fails–in both cases “this” is an empty object.

I’m wondering about this so I can easily export all functions visible in a module’s namespace–I want to be able to do something like:

function foo() { };
function bar() { };

["foo", "bar"].forEach(function (k) {
    exports[k] = ???;
});

(eval(k) works for the ???, but, ugh.)

Answer 1

Matt Ball’s answer is pretty good:

var foo = exports.foo = function() {
  //...
};. 

// Or, you could create your own object containing 
// the functions you'll later export: 

var fns = {}; 

fns.foo = function(){...}; 

// ... 

fns.forEach(/*...*/); 

// – Matt Ball Feb 27 at 14:42

Alternatively,

exports.foo = {
  method1: function() { /*...*/ }
, method2: function() { /*...*/ }
, method3: function() { /*...*/ }
  /*...*/
}

Some modules which exhibit best practices:
https://github.com/cloudhead/journey/blob/master/lib/journey.js
For browser compat: https://github.com/caolan/async/blob/master/lib/async.js
https://github.com/mikeal/request/blob/master/main.js

/fyi #node.js IRC welcomes you: http://bit.ly/nodeIRC