Why does the value returned should be on the same line as the return statement in JavaScript?

Question

The following doesn\'t work as I would expect it to:

function test()
{
  // Returns undefined, even though I thought it would return 1
  return
  1;
}
         


        

Answer 1

It's explicitly part of the language spec. If it were not, there would still be return issues:

if (something())  return
counter = counter + 1;

Without the semicolon insertion rule, that missing semicolon would trigger behavior that's (I'd argue) just as bizarre as what happens now with return statements split across a newline.