dojo.lang.isAlien intermittently broken on IE6/7

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For some instances of IE6 / IE7 Beta 2, dojo.lang.isAlien bombs out attempting to turn the a function like window.setTimeout into a string to perform the RegEx?, saying "Object does not support this action".

Easiest fix seems to be to lift the isAlien from Crockford.

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Test case for lang.common's isAlien

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I've attached a test case that should exercise the dojo.lang.isAlien function appropriately, but I'm not able to break IE6 or IE7 with it. I guess this one can be marked closed, as I can no longer reproduce the bug.

[[email protected]…]

Oop, now it's busted again. Yay intermittent bugs.

Here's what I added to lang.common, just after the normal isAlien def: (function(){

if((dojo.render.html.capable)&&(dojo.render.html.ie)){

dojo.lang.isAlien = function(/*anything*/ it){

return it !== null && dojo.lang.isObject(a) && typeof a.constructor != 'function';

};

}

})();

[guest]

Actually, that code is busted. This is better:

(function(){
  if((dojo.render.html.capable)&&(dojo.render.html.ie)){
    dojo.lang.isAlien = function(/*anything*/ it) {
      if(!it) { return false; }
      return dojo.lang.isObject(it) && typeof(it.constructor) != 'function';
    }
  }
})();

[Adam Peller]

Hey Ben. You're a committer now, you can have this one :) Can you please assess whether we still need this?

[Ben Lowery]

Unsure if this is still needed. Let's leave it open just in case, but defer it.

[Adam Peller]

sounds like this is no longer needed. can we close?

[Ben Lowery]

Resolving as Fixed. Can't repro any more.

[guest]

Replying to blowery:

Resolving as Fixed. Can't repro any more.

I ran into a similar issue explained here and it ended up being related to if the Ask.com Toolbar was installed. Having that installed caused isAlien() to throw an exception. I resolved it by just wrapping it in a try/catch and defaulting on returning false. Just an FYI.

Chris