Empty Function Shorthand

JavaScript is an interesting language and so far my favorite. Maybe it's just me but I find stuff some people complain about javascript such as automatic semicolon insertion, the way javascript scoping works and function/variable hoisting to be some of its best features.

Sometimes javascript functions may require Function arguments or callbacks when you don't want to. This can happen often when you're writing mock components for tests. I used to do this by

var do_nothing = function () {};
foo("bar", do_nothing);

You can get get the same result by using the Function constructor and make the code a tiny bit cleaner. This is not a random hack either. If you check what happens, it also makes sense. The demo code would look like this when using the constructor.

foo("bar", Function());

What happens is, Function() returns a Function object with an empty body so it does nothing interesting. If you're still not sure, copy the following code to your browser console or node REPL.

Function().toString();

Update: found out that Function.prototype is an empty function and a much better choice because you're not creating new functions like the Function() constructor does.