Question

I’m in need to declare a local variable and test for it inside of condition of if statement. I want to be able to do it as it is possible like this, however I need to do it without global scope; is this possible?

notWorkingSofar('#element');
function notWorkingSofar(a) {
   if(!(b=document.getElementById(a.slice(1)))){return b;}
   else{return false;}
}

I need it to basically do this; however that gives SyntaxError.

notWorkingSofar('#element');
    function notWorkingSofar(a) {
       if(!(**var** b=document.getElementById(a.slice(1)))){return b;}
       else{return false;}
    }

Is there any other way to access or set local variables, other then by “var variable=”? Maybe by function.variable, akin to window.variable… Not sure though.

EDIT: Trying to do it inside a chain of these: (!!(b = document.getElementById(a.slice(1)))?b:[0,])

Answer 1

You don’t need a variable at all. You could just do:

function notWorkingSofar(a) {
   return document.getElementById(a.slice(1)) || false;
}

or if you are not going to test for strict equality, even

return document.getElementById(a.slice(1));

will be fine.

---

If you really want a local variable than declare it with

var b;

beforehand.