Question

I was looking at Twitter’s static scripts and noticed that all variables and functions where just 1 character long, why and how do they do this? Has it something to do with performance? If so, why don’t they give all elements on their website these kind of short names, maybe 2 characters long instead of 1 to avoid any collisions.

Example:

(function (A) {
A.fn.isScreenNameField = function () {
    return this.each(function () {
        var M = A(this);
        var F = A("#signup_username_url");
        var E = A("#screen_name_info");
        var D = A("#avail_screenname_check_indicator");
        var O;
        var C;
        var I;
        var N = M.val();
        var G = N;
        var H = N != "";
        var Q = /[a-zA-Z0-9_]/;

        function K() {
            if (H) {
                F.html(M.val())
            }
        }
        function L() {
            M.trigger("show-info");
            E.hide();
            D.show()
        }
        function B() {
            E.show();
            D.hide()
        }
        function P() {
            G = O;
            jQuery.ajax({
                type: "GET",
                url: "/users/username_available",
                data: {
                    username: O
                },
                dataType: "json",
                success: function (R) {
                    if (C) {
                        var S = R.msg;
                        if (R.valid) {
                            M.trigger("is-valid");
                            F.removeClass("invalid").addClass("valid")
                        } else {
                            M.trigger("is-invalid", R.msg);
                            F.addClass("invalid").removeClass("valid")
                        }
                    }
                },
                beforeSend: null,
                complete: function () {
                    clearTimeout(twttr.timeouts.availabilityTimeout);
                    B()
                }
            })
        }
        function J(R) {
            O = M.val();
            clearTimeout(twttr.timeouts.availabilityTimeout);
            C = O.match(Q);
            if (!C) {
                G = O;
                B();
                return
            }
            if (O == G) {
                return
            }
            L();
            twttr.timeouts.availabilityTimeout = setTimeout(P, 2000)
        }
        M.isSignupFormField({
            validateWith: function (R) {
                if (isBlank(R)) {
                    return _("Please enter a user name")
                } else {
                    P()
                }
            },
            allowInput: Q
        });
        M.keyup(function (R) {
            if (jQuery.inArray(R.keyCode, [16, 17, 18, 20, 27, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 144]) == -1) {
                if (M.val() != "") {
                    H = true
                } else {
                    M.trigger("show-info")
                }
                K();
                J()
            }
        });
        M.bind("value-changed", P);
        M.bind("custom-validate", P)
    })P
}
})

Answer 1

This script has been “minified”, an automated technique of replacing variables with shorter names, without changing functionality. See JSMin, for example. The goal is to reduce download times and bandwidth when sending the script to a client.