-%> (hyphen character) in .js.erb

rubyonrails-talk
1

shellz wrote in post #1095771:

syntax error, unexpected tSTRING_BEG, expecting keyword_end_erbout.concat "\n"

which refers to a line in a .js.erb file ending in -%>.

The ending hyphen was added to eliminate the line break in .html.erb files. But when I remove the hyphen, the error goes away. The last sentence ofsection'2.2.1 CSS and ERB' in

<http://guides.rubyonrails.org/asset_pipeline.html&gt;http://guides.rubyonrails.org/asset_pipeline.html

says 'Note that the closing tag cannot be of the style -%>.' Does anyone know why adding the dash before %> in .js.erb (and apparently in .css.erb) files causes the rails precompiler to fail?

Because using -%> causes a syntax error, unexpected tSTRING_BEG to occur.

<<<Damn that was a smart-ass reply. Shame on me>>>

In my quick test case I got a syntax error, unexpected ')' ...rbout.concat(( 'Hello World' -).to_s); _erbout.concat "\");\...

Notice that the dash is still there trying to be concatenated in.

I don't really know exactly why, but it's obvious you cannot use -%> in js.erb or css.erb, so don't do it and your code wont fail.

2

See the last sentence of section 2.2.1 of the Asset Pipeline guide: The Asset Pipeline — Ruby on Rails Guides

3

Sorry, that was redundant.

It's because -%> needs to know how to remove whitespace from within the file itself, parsing & reading the content outside the replacement content. I don't know for sure but I'll bet the explanation is simply that this is too complicated in these pipeline files because whitespace works differently.