Getting All Variables In Scope

Question

Is there a way to get all variables that are currently in scope in javascript?

Answer 1

How much time do you have?

If you hate your cpu you can bruteforce through every valid variable name, and eval each one to see if it results in a value!

The following snippet tries the first 1000 bruteforce strings, which is enough to find the contrived variable names in scope:

let alpha = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz';
let everyPossibleString = function*() {
  yield '';
  for (let prefix of everyPossibleString()) for (let char of alpha) yield `${prefix}${char}`;
};
let allVarsInScope = (iterations=1000) => {  
  let results = {};
  let count = 0;
  for (let bruteforceString of everyPossibleString()) {
    if (!bruteforceString) continue; // Skip the first empty string
    try { results[bruteforceString] = eval(bruteforceString); } catch(err) {}
    if (count++ > iterations) break;
  }
  return results;
};

let myScope = (() => {
    
  let dd = 'ffffd';
  let ee = 'eee';
  let ff = 'fff';
  
  ((gg, hh) => {
    
    // We can't call a separate function, since that function would be outside our
    // scope and wouldn't be able to see any variables - but we can define the
    // function in place (using `eval(allVarsInScope.toString())`), and then call
    // that defined-in-place function
    console.log(eval(allVarsInScope.toString())());
    
  })('ggg', 'hhh');
  
})();

This script will eventually (after a very long time) find all scoped variable names, as well as abc nifty and swell, some example variables I created. Note it will only find variable names consisting of alpha characters.

let preElem = document.getElementsByClassName('display')[0];
let statusElem = document.getElementsByClassName('status')[0];
let alpha = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz';
alpha += alpha.toUpperCase();
let everyPossibleString = function*() {
  yield '';
  for (let prefix of everyPossibleString()) for (let char of alpha) yield `${prefix}${char}`;
};

(async () => {
  
  let abc = 'This is the ABC variable :-|';
  let neato = 'This is the NEATO variable :-)';
  let swell = 'This is the SWELL variable :-D';
  
  let results = {};
  let batch = 25000;
  let waitMs = 25;
  let count = 0;
  let startStr = null;

  for (let bruteStr of everyPossibleString()) {
    
    try {

      if (bruteStr === '') continue;
      if (startStr === null) startStr = bruteStr;

      try { results[bruteStr] = eval(bruteStr); } catch(err) {}

      if (count++ >= batch) {
        
        statusElem.innerHTML = `Did batch of ${batch} from ${startStr} -> ${bruteStr}`;
        preElem.innerHTML = JSON.stringify(results, null, 2);
        
        count = 0;
        startStr = null;
        await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, waitMs));

      }
      
    } catch(err) {
      
      // It turns out some global variables are protected by stackoverflow's snippet
      // system (these include "top", "self", and "this"). If these values are touched
      // they result in a weird iframe error, captured in this `catch` statement. The
      // program can recover by replacing the most recent `result` value (this will be
      // the value which causes the error).
      let lastEntry = Object.entries(results).slice(-1)[0];
      results[lastEntry[0]] = '';
            
    }

  }
  
  console.log('Done...'); // Will literally never happen

})();

html, body { position: fixed; left: 0; top: 0; right: 0; bottom: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0; overflow: hidden }
.display {
  position: fixed;
  box-sizing: border-box;
  left: 0; top: 0;
  bottom: 30px; right: 0;
  overflow-y: scroll;
  white-space: pre;
  font-family: monospace;
  padding: 10px;
  box-shadow: inset 0 0 10px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3);
}
.status {
  position: fixed;
  box-sizing: border-box;
  left: 0; bottom: 0px; right: 0; height: 30px; line-height: 30px;
  padding: 0 10px;
  background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);
  color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 1);
  font-family: monospace;
}

I am all too aware there is virtually no situation where this is practical