Are there legitimate uses for JavaScript's “with” statement?

Question

Alan Storm\'s comments in response to my answer regarding the with statement got me thinking. I\'ve seldom found a reason to use this particular language feature, and had ne

Answer 1

Here's a good use for with: adding new elements to an Object Literal, based on values stored in that Object. Here's an example that I just used today:

I had a set of possible tiles (with openings facing top, bottom, left, or right) that could be used, and I wanted a quick way of adding a list of tiles which would be always placed and locked at the start of the game. I didn't want to keep typing types.tbr for each type in the list, so I just used with.

Tile.types = (function(t,l,b,r) {
  function j(a) { return a.join(' '); }
  // all possible types
  var types = { 
    br:  j(  [b,r]),
    lbr: j([l,b,r]),
    lb:  j([l,b]  ),  
    tbr: j([t,b,r]),
    tbl: j([t,b,l]),
    tlr: j([t,l,r]),
    tr:  j([t,r]  ),  
    tl:  j([t,l]  ),  
    locked: []
  };  
  // store starting (base/locked) tiles in types.locked
  with( types ) { locked = [ 
    br,  lbr, lbr, lb, 
    tbr, tbr, lbr, tbl,
    tbr, tlr, tbl, tbl,
    tr,  tlr, tlr, tl
  ] } 
  return types;
})("top","left","bottom","right");