Uglify SyntaxError: Unexpected token: punc ())

Question

I am trying to use gulp in order to minify a folder containing JS files. However, one of the files has the above error, preventing it from being minified.

I managed

Answer 1

Add stage-3 to presets in .babelrc file.

{
  "presets": [
    "stage-3"
  ]
}

Answer 2

// Update

From the comments ~ @imolit

 v2.0.0 (2018-09-14) - BREAKING CHANGES (link)

Switch back to uglify-js (uglify-es is abandoned, if you need uglify ES6 code please use terser-webpack-plugin).

---

Original answer before the update...

I hope you can get inspired by this solution which works with webpack. (link below)

Simply teach UglifyJS ES6

There are two versions of UglifyJS - ES5 and ES6 (Harmony), see on git
ES5 version comes by default with all the plugins, but if you install a Harmony version explicitly, those plugins will use it instead.

package.json

"uglify-js": "git+https://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2.git#harmony"

or

npm install --save uglify-js@github:mishoo/UglifyJS2#harmony

yarn add git://github.com/mishoo/UglifyJS2#harmony --dev

---

Webpack

To use it with webpack install also the webpack plugin

npm install uglifyjs-webpack-plugin --save-dev

yarn add uglifyjs-webpack-plugin --dev

then import the manually installed plugin

var UglifyJSPlugin = require('uglifyjs-webpack-plugin');

and replace it in code

-  new webpack.optimize.UglifyJsPlugin({ ... })
+  new UglifyJSPlugin({ ... })

---

For more webpack info (Installation/Usage) see https://github.com/webpack-contrib/uglifyjs-webpack-plugin#install

Answer 3

npm install uglifyjs-webpack-plugin --save-dev is not enough

The main problem is "uglifyjs-webpack-plugin": "^0.4.6" in webpack's package.json

According to semver, ^0.4.6 := >=0.4.6 <0.5.0. Because of the leading zero, webpack will never use the 1.0.0-beta.2.

So after running npm i -D uglifyjs-webpack-plugin@beta, you need to do one more step which is rm -rf node_modules/webpack/node_modules/uglifyjs-webpack-plugin. Then webpack will pick up the version from node_modules/uglifyjs-webpack-plugin instead of node_modules/webpack/node_modules/uglifyjs-webpack-plugin

Update on 2018-04-18: webpack v4 does not have this issue

Answer 4

Add the babel-preset-es2015 dependency to fix this.

And also add 'es2015' in .babelrc file.

json
{
    "presets": ["es2015"]
}

Answer 5

For me it had nothing to do with Uglify not working correctly, but rather a dependency (in this case empty-promise) that has not been compiled to ES5 yet. As we just imported the raw source file, but babel is only transpiling files outside of node_modules, uglify got confused by the ES6 syntax.

Simply check if any dependency you've recently added might not have a "dist" build.

Answer 6

I had the same problem with you. I was using gulp.js. I solved this problem thanks to js files change ES format. For example before solved is my code:

for (district for response) {
                $('#districts').append('<option value="' + district.id + '">' + district.name + '</option>');
                $('#districts').removeAttr('disabled');
            }

after fix code:

for (district in response) {
                $('#districts').append('<option value="' + district.id + '">' + district.name + '</option>');
                $('#districts').removeAttr('disabled');
            }

In summary, the problem is due to Ecma-uglify.js.