Minification (programming): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 15:55, 12 April 2021

Revision as of 07:24, 7 May 2021

Line 6:

Minification can be distinguished from the more general concept of [[data compression]] in that the minified source can be interpreted immediately without the need for an uncompression step: the same interpreter can work with both the original as well as with the minified source.

The goals of minification are not the same as the goals of [[Obfuscated code|obfuscation]]; the former is often intended to be reversed using a [[pretty-print]]er{{citation needed|date=July 2020}} or unminifier. However, to achieve its goals, minification sometimes uses techniques also used by [[obfuscation]]; for example, shortening variable names and refactoring the [[source code]]. When minification uses such techniques, the [[pretty-print]]er or unminifier can only fully reverse the minification process if it is supplied details of the transformations done by such techniques. If not supplied those details, the reversed [[source code]] will contain different variable names and control flow, even though it will have the same functionality as the original [[source code]].

==Example==