Is there a benefit to minifying JavaScript before gzipping it?

Question

Is there some valid purpose to minifying before compressing? It seems highly unlikely that the gzipped file is smaller if it's minified first.

I ask because diagnosing production problems in minified code is substantially more difficult, and I'm wondering if people are subjecting themselves to that for no purpose.

Answer 1

As for raw file size, here is a sample (jQuery 1.4.2):

$ curl http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.4.2.js | gzip > jquery.gz
$ curl http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.4.2.min.js | gzip > jquery-min.gz

$ ls -la jquery*
-rw-r--r--  1 me  staff  24545 Apr  7 12:02 jquery-min.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 me  staff  45978 Apr  7 12:02 jquery.gz

So the minified version is about half the size.

Answer 2

Yes, there is definately a benefit.

Minifying is a lossy compression whereas gzipping is lossless. Ergo, with minifying you remove unneeded data (like comments and long variablenames) which will always help to make your file smaller. Even with gzip there will still be a difference in most cases.

Example:

function foo(this_is_my_variable){
    var this_is_my_other_variable = 0;
    this_is_my_other_variable = this_is_my_other_variable + this_is_my_variable;
    return this_is_my_other_variable;
}

That might be minified to:

function foo(a){
    var b = 0;
    b = b +a;
    return b;
}

Or if the minifier is smart:

function foo(a){
    return a;
}

All code gives the same results, but the size differs a lot.