A few days ago a friend and I were playing around with the Javascript console in Chrome (using a slightly older version, but this can be repeated in the latest stable build on both OSX and windows) when we assigned a string to the variable $x.
$x = "hello"
but when we echo out the value of $x, we get given the following code in the console:
bound: function (xpath, context)
{
var doc = (context && context.ownerDocument) || inspectedWindow.document;
var result = doc.evaluate(xpath, context || doc, null, XPathResult.ANY_TYPE, null);
switch (result.resultType) {
case XPathResult.NUMBER_TYPE:
return result.numberValue;
case XPathResult.STRING_TYPE:
return result.stringValue;
case XPathResult.BOOLEAN_TYPE:
return result.booleanValue;
default:
var nodes = [];
var node;
while (node = result.iterateNext())
nodes.push(node);
return nodes;
}
}
We got a similar output in stable versions of Safari and Firefox. As far as we can tell, the $x variable is not attached to the global window object.
What is $x, and what's it used for?
The Sources panel provides the ability to watch variables within your application. This is located in the watch section of the debugger sidebar.
To view and inspect one or multiple variables at a time, right-click the variable or variables and select Monitor Local Variable from the pop-up menu to work with the variables in the Monitors view.
Looks to be related to the XPath (XML Path Language)....A helper of sorts...I found a link which may assist you.. http://userscripts.org/topics/26131 Hope that helps..
That's an XPath utility function. From the fine Firebug manual:
$x(xpath)
Returns an array of elements that match the given XPath expression.
And from the fine Chrome manual:
$x(xpath)
Returns an array of DOM elements that match the given XPath expression.
The $x
function isn't part of JavaScript itself, it is just a utility that's available in the console. If you try to access $x
outside the console (http://jsfiddle.net/ambiguous/fsewU/), you'll get a ReferenceError unless, of course, you've defined your own $x
somewhere.
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With