I have two javascript files on my site:

• jquery.js -- the jquery javascript library
• java.js -- my own scripts

I keep them separated because java.js is much smaller than jquery.js, so it's easier to work on. Obviously I never edit jquery.js. But I want to combine these two files into one (to save an HTTP request). And then I want to minify them using YUI compressor.

This all works fine if I do it by hand: I just copy-&-paste java.js onto the end of jquery.js, and then I run YUI on the resultant file. No problem.

But I want to automate this process, so I wrote a batch file to merge them (replacing the copy-&-paste step). Here's my batch file:



The resultant file looks exactly the same, but when I run YUI it generates (fatal) errors:



Puzzled by this, I loaded up both files in WinMerge to get a side-by-side comparison. WinMerge gave me this message, which I think is important:



When I said "yes", WinMerge showed the files to be identical. When I said "no", Winmerge showed the files to be different on every line.

So what's going on? I presume that my batch file has changed the encoding of carriage returns somehow; but I have no idea how. Help!


** EDIT **

Looking more closely at WinMerge, there is a single character difference at the very end of the file: a strange little box containing "1A".

When I delete this character, YUI works fine.

Looking at the file in Homesite, this single character appears to be a forced line break (it looks like the return/enter key). All the other line breaks are paragraph symbols (the pilcrow).

Hi Mike,

I haven't run into this prob before, but it's definitely a matter of line-break vs carriage return. DOS uses carriage while *NIX uses line break, so I'm thinking YUI is essentially using "\n"s, but when you combine them beforehand with batch it's adding "\r"s to the file.

You could write a bash script to do the same thing, or maybe YUI has a flag for carriage returns? Come to think of it, try remove line breaks and carriage returns from your files before running the batch script... they're useless anyways when you're talking about compressed files.

Or, you could write a PHP script that does this work for you.

Personally, I would leave the two files separate, for a couple reasons...

1. Version control. Every time you update your "java.js" file you will have to merge your files again.
2. Caching. Granted, having separate files means you add an HTTP request for each additional file, but included js files are cached by the browser so they won't be downloaded again.

Hope this helps!
Rich

There you go...

1A is hex for "end of file".

Rich

Aha! Thank you.

So, how can I delete this character automatically, or prevent it from appearing in the first place?

As for the version control/caching: I'm not too worried about that. It's not like I change my javascript every day. I'm planning to use a far-futures expiry together with a version suffix (thereby eliminating HTTP requests altogether once the file has been cached). Obviously this adds a slight development burden, but I don't need to update javascript/css/images frequently.

Besides, this development burden is nothing compared to implementing CSS sprites!

O-ho! I have solved it.

(Note to Karinne: I didn't solve this one entirely on my own. Rewake's uber-techy input was essential.)

Windows can create files in binary or ASCII mode. So I added the binary switch /b to the output, and it works (creates a binary rather than an ASCII file, I believe):

Ain't that the truth!! lol I still have a bunch of sprites to create as a matter of fact!

Rich

Have you seen SmartSprites?

I've never used CSS sprites, but I plan to give that a whirl.