Hi, the default "output"

function

attribute in cfscript is true?

If the default was true, then

script_output1()

should cause "script_1" to display, but it doesn't.

in CFCs it's usually set on the component level, and also defaults to false IIRC

My possibly but probably not out of date understanding is that cfscript outputs nothing unless you call writeOutput(), writeDump(), and possibly some other explicitly output related functions. Plain text without one of those doesn't output anything.

@paolo79 What @Dave Merrill said is correct. Just because script functions default output to true, that doesn't mean that random strings you declare in the functions are going to be send to the page!! The following line of code is valid CFML

"<br>script_1";

BUT IT OUTPUTS NOTHING. All it does is declare a string which is not set into any variable. Unlike tags, script requires you to explicitly output to the page buffer with

writeOutput( "<br>script_1"; );

I think the somewhat bogus assumption is that cfscript is for "logic", and tags are for rendering. That's definitely how it appears from that behavior. In reality, I definitely do rendering in cfscript too, it's just way cleaner code in many cases, unless you have a big block of html with a few expressions embedded. Similar assumptions are behind many frameworks only supporting cfm files as renderers, not cfcs. I whine about this every few years and get pilloried for it, not least by the esteemed Mr @seancorfield, who no doubt will reprise that role shortly ;)

my pillory isn't quite as robust as his, but you can borrow it until he gets here

Appreciate it 🙂

2005: render in tags because everything is tags 2012: move logic to script because it's script and that's what it's for 2020: talk trash about people who concatenate SQL or write views in script 2022: rendering is done in react/vue anyway, sorry CF

thanks for all the replies. my doubt is related to the fact that with <cffunction> without output attribute, memory leaks are generated in the JVM for this reason I try to understand whether to specify it always the same or not, but from what I have read it seems that in cfscript this should no longer happen

with <cffunction> without output attribute, memory leaks are generated in the JVM

@paolo79 I've never heard of this. Do you have a link to an article or something showing this so-called memory leak? This is new to me.

at this topic i've found the old link http://wiki.mxunit.org/display/default/How+cfcomponent+output%3Dtrue++can+affect+memory+consumption but the behavior may now be different. Since we are migrating our code from "tag" to "cfscript" I was trying to figure out whether to keep it or remove it

@paolo79 "memory consumption" is not the same as a "memory leak". Also, it doesn't really matter unless you're on Lucee 5.3+ because Adobe CF and previous versions of Lucee still track all output during the method execution only to discard it at the end of the invocation. This is what allows you to dump/abort in the middle of an output=false method and still see the output.

thanks @bdw429s - "memory consumption" is correct term. We use ACF, so do you think it appropriate to still use output=false to avoid overload problems?

you should use output=true/false based on whether or not you need output to be emitted from a function

but if 99% is not used, omitting it might have performance issues with ACF?

99% of what

of all our methods in the components

But again, please stop worrying about a few KB of memory here and there and use the setting as it's intended-- based on whether you need to output anything or not.

^^^ This. @paolo79, you're complicating your life by optimizing for this. You don't need to explcitly shut output off in a context where no output is generated in the first place.