Expected an assignment or function call and instead saw an expression when calling function

Question

I am making a flashcard/test program. For some reason, I'm not checking the result when I call the function getAns. JSHint is giving this error:

Expected an assignment or function call and instead saw an expression.

Here's my code:

function getAns() {
  if (answer[i] == lastPress) {
    document.getElementById("ans").innerHTML = "You're correct! The answer was " + lastPress;
  } else {
    document.getElementById("ans").innerHTML = "We're sorry, but that is not correct. The answer was " + answer[i];
  }
  i++;
  document.getElementById("question").innerHTML = questions[i];
}
document.getElementById("true").onclick = function() {
  lastPress = true
};
document.getElementById("true").onclick = function() {
  getAns
};
document.getElementById("false").onclick = function() {
  lastPress = false
};
document.getElementById("false").onclick = function() {
  getAns
};

`getAns` is an expression, not an assignment (`getAns = ...`) or function call (`getAns()`). Also you seem to be adding two different `onclick` functions to each element. — jonrsharpe, Dec 09 '19 at 16:57
Re @jonrsharpe's second point: If you want to do two things in your handler, write one after another in a single handler function: `.onclick = function() { lastPress = true; getAns(); };` But also look at using modern event handling (`addEventListener`), rather than assigning to `onclick`. — T.J. Crowder, Dec 09 '19 at 16:59
Also `document.getElementById("true").onclick = function() { lastPress = true; getAns(); };` — mplungjan, Dec 09 '19 at 16:59
Could you paste the code with the line numbers? Also pasting the exact error (with line number) would help — paroxyzm, Dec 09 '19 at 17:55

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 09 '19 at 17:48

It looks like you're getting the error from using getAns as a statement and not calling it as a function.

Ideally, your onclick functions would pass the last keypress to getAns(). For example:

document.getElementById("true").onclick = function() {
   getAns(true);
};

And your handler would receive the value:

function getAns(lastPress) {
    ...
}

Expected an assignment or function call and instead saw an expression when calling function

1 Answers1