JavaScript Prank / Joke

Question

How do you prank a coworker or friend in a way that's hard to notice and fix? Preferably in JavaScript, and without having install any programs.

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about boring pranks replacing a stupid character that any decent editor would detect immediately. — adeneo, Nov 17 '14 at 04:07
@adeneo Actually, Sublime (a very popular code editor) will not detect this at all. As long as the code editor doesn't have a plugin like JShint, it should go undetected. — Luc, Nov 17 '14 at 17:35

score 211 · Accepted Answer · edited May 04 '22 at 12:03

211

Greek Question Mark - Semicolon Prank

(Tested in JavaScript)

Replace one or several semicolons in a coworker or friend's code with the Greek question mark:

;

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_mark#Greek_question_mark)

If you compare the two, they look exactly the same: ;;

The first ; is a greek question mark, and the second ; is a normal semicolon.

The Greek question mark throws a SyntaxError: Unexpected token ILLEGAL in JavaScript, and probably throws errors in other languages as well. Make sure you're saving the code file in Unicode/UTF-8.

edited May 04 '22 at 12:03

yivi

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answered Nov 17 '14 at 04:04

Luc

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...That is evil. – Pillgram Feb 15 '15 at 21:31
21

Very easy to detect & fix. Usually if I don't know why I have an error at a certain line, I wipe the whole line and rewrite it. – Eduard Luca Jul 07 '15 at 14:26
In visual studio it compiles properly – John Demetriou Nov 11 '15 at 13:53
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@JohnDemetriou Interesting. It must be converting from Unicode to an encoding that doesn't have the Greek Question Mark. That means it would turn the character into a semicolon before it compiles. – Luc Nov 12 '15 at 02:37
Find and replace all can easily fix this though. – BrightIntelDusk Nov 01 '16 at 21:52
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@BrightIntelDusk An easy fix is the perfect type of fix for a prank though. I had a coworker replace `True = False` in a python django app. Code ran fine for the most part but it cost the guy a day of work – TankorSmash Mar 17 '17 at 19:09
this is not working. I typed greek question mark using alt+59 – Sunil Garg Mar 22 '17 at 12:45
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Do this in a minimised js file, and watch his world burn. – Stender Jan 22 '18 at 12:58
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If using yarn and babel: modify the version of babel in the global yarn cache so that it writes the Greek question mark instead of semicolon. – Max Heiber Jan 28 '18 at 18:17
`xmodmap -e 'keycode 47 = U037E colon U037E colon'` – user3840170 Mar 10 '21 at 20:50
@BrightIntelDusk Sure, if they happened to read this exact answer. Otherwise, how would they know? – Anonymous Apr 02 '21 at 14:18

JavaScript Prank / Joke

1 Answers1

Greek Question Mark - Semicolon Prank

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