Is “remove” a reserved keyword in Google Chrome?

Question

I have an interesting problem, and I think I got to the root of it, but I wanted to be sure. I have a link that calls a function called remove(). All browsers except Chrom

Answer 1

Elements in Chrome have a .remove() method which allows for self-removal of an element instead of having to do it from the parent.

The trouble is that when using attribute handlers, you get a different scope chain. That scope chain includes the element itself, as well as the document. This means that all properties of the element and document show up as variables.

Because you named your function remove(), and because it's a global function/variable, it is being shadowed by the .remove property (now variable) on the element itself. This can be seen with an alert. If you change your handler to:

onclick="alert(remove)"

...you'll get something like:

function remove() { [native code] }

So it's not that it's reserved, but rather that it's used as a property which ends up shadowing the global.

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To fix it, either use the global directly:

onclick="window.remove()"

Or change the function name.