Question

Making some Bookmarklet, I tried to use JavaScript minifier like Google Closure Compiler or YUI Compressor. However, I didn’t use these because they replace every single quotes with double quotes. I can’t use a code which has double quotes, as I should enclose the code with double quotes like:

<a href="javascript:alert('hello')">hello</a>

So, I used MinifyJavascript for minifying. I wonder why other minifiers replace quotes. Replacing quotes doesn’t minify codes. Coding style is not important for minified code. Then what is the reason for this?

Answer 1

Pure speculation in this answer:

• Enforce style consistency.
• Consistency reduces size when gzip’ed, because of repeating character sequences.

Can’t really think of anything else.
They could have chosen single quotes instead of double, though.