Chrome Uncaught Syntax Error: Unexpected Token ILLEGAL [duplicate]

Question

Receiving the subject error when Chrome tries to load the script file on the page. It says it's at the last line of the javascript file. I can't seem to find anything wrong with it. No errors in firefox, and the script works as expected. Just using form validation

// JavaScript Document
$(function() {
  $('#wm-form').submit(function() {
    var errors = false;
    var errorMsg = "";
    $('.required').each(function() {
      if(!validField($(this))) {
        errorMsg += $(this).attr('name').capitalize() + " cannot be blank\n";
        errors = true;
      }
    });
    var emailAddress = $('#email');
    if(isValid(emailAddress) && !(/^(([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)@([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)\.([a-zA-Z]{2,5}){1,25})+([;.](([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)@([a-zA-Z0-9_\-\.]+)\.([a-zA-Z]{2,5}){1,25})+)*$/.test(emailAddress.val()))) {
      errorMsg += "Not a valid email address. Please enter in a correctly formatted email address";
      errors = true;
    }
    if(errors) {
      alert(errorMsg);
      return false;
    }
  });

  $('.form-focus').click(function() {
    $(document).scrollTop(0);
    $('#first_name').focus();
    return false;
  });
});

function validField(element) {
  if(!isValid(element.val()) || (element.attr('placeholder') && element.attr('placeholder') == element.val()) || 
    (element.attr('type') == 'radio' && !checkedRadio(element))) {
    return false;
  }
  else {
    return true;
  }
}

function isValid(ele) {
  if(ele == null || ele == '') {
    return false;
  }
  else {
    return true;
  }
}

String.prototype.capitalize = function() {
    return this.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + this.slice(1);
};

function checkedRadio (element) {
  var valid = false;
  $('input[name="'+ element.attr("name") +'"]:checked').each(function() {
    valid = true;
  });

  return valid;
}​

Answer 1

There's some sort of bogus character at the end of that source. Try deleting the last line and adding it back.

I can't figure out exactly what's there, yet ...

edit — I think it's a zero-width space, Unicode 200B. Seems pretty weird and I can't be sure of course that it's not a Stackoverflow artifact, but when I copy/paste that last function including the complete last line into the Chrome console, I get your error.

A notorious source of such characters are websites like jsfiddle. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with them — it's just a side-effect of something, maybe the use of content-editable input widgets.

If you suspect you've got a case of this ailment, and you're on MacOS or Linux/Unix, the od command line tool can show you (albeit in a fairly ugly way) the numeric values in the characters of the source code file. Some IDEs and editors can show "funny" characters as well. Note that such characters aren't always a problem. It's perfectly OK (in most reasonable programming languages, anyway) for there to be embedded Unicode characters in string constants, for example. The problems start happening when the language parser encounters the characters when it doesn't expect them.

Answer 2

I get the same error in Chrome after pasting code copied from jsfiddle.

If you select all the code from a panel in jsfiddle and paste it into the free text editor Notepad++, you should be able to see the problem character as a question mark "?" at the very end of your code. Delete this question mark, then copy and paste the code from Notepad++ and the problem will be gone.

Answer 3

I had the same error when multiline string included new line (\n) characters. Merging all lines into one (thus removing all new line characters) and sending it to a browser used to solve. But was very inconvenient to code.

Often could not understand why this was an issue in Chrome until I came across to a statement which said that the current version of JavaScript engine in Chrome doesn't support multiline strings which are wrapped in single quotes and have new line (\n) characters in them. To make it work, multiline string need to be wrapped in double quotes. Changing my code to this, resolved this issue.

I will try to find a reference to a standard or Chrome doc which proves this. Until then, try this solution and see if works for you as well.

Answer 4

I had the same error in Chrome. The Chrome console told me that the error was in the 1st line of the HTML file.

It was actually in the .js file. So watch out for setValidNou(1060, $(this).val(), 0') error types.