Is there any way to declare a variable at "file" scope (which will be closured by CS), without initializing it? A contrived example:
init = ->
counter = 0
inc = ->
counter += 1
This won't work, because you need to declare "counter". Adding "counter = 0" to the top would make it work, but the "= 0" is unnecessary. (A more realistic example would involve something that accesses the DOM on page load - there's no way to correctly initialize it in "file" scope.)
You'll have to define it on the outer scope, as you mentioned.
counter = null
init = ->
counter = 0
inc = ->
counter += 1
= null syntax.
If your functions where part of an object you could use @counter, like this:
obj =
init: ->
@counter = 0
inc: ->
@counter += 1
You can say `var counter;` with backticks and that is passed literally through to the generated javascript.
When you have a problem like this, look at the generated javascript. It will be extremely clear that the variable scope is lexically limited to the function.
Looking at the generated javascript is often a good way to understand what the behavior of coffeescript constructs is.
