Are there any JavaScript static analysis tools?
I'm used to having my compiler complain when I do something stupid like a typo on a variable name but JavaScript has a habit of letting this pass.
Are there any static analysis tools for JavaScript?
Answer
UPDATED ANSWER, 2017: Yes. Use ESLint. http://eslint.org
In addition to JSLint (already mentioned in Flash Sheridan's answer) and the Closure compiler (previously mentioned in awhyte's answer) I have have also gotten a lot of benefit from running JSHint and PHP CodeSniffer. As of 2012, all four tools are free open-source and have a large and active developer community behind them. They're each a bit different (and I think, complementary) in the kinds of checks they perform:
JSLint was designed to be, and still is Douglas Crockford's personal linting tool. It ships with a great default ruleset -- Crockford's own, constantly updated as he continues to learn about JavaScript and its pitfalls. JSLint is highly opinionated and this is generally seen as a good thing. Thus there's (intentionally) a limited amount you can do to configure or disable individual rules. But this can make it tough to apply JSLint to legacy code.
JSHint is very similar to JSLint (in fact it began life as JSLint fork) but it is easier/possible to configure or disable all of JSLint's checks via command line options or via a .jshintrc file.
I particularly like that I can tell JSHint to report all of the errors in a file, even if there are hundreds of errors. By contrast, although JSLint does have a maxerr configuration option, it will generally bail out relatively early when attempting to process files that contain large numbers of errors.
The Closure compiler is extremely useful in that, if code won't compile with Closure, you can feel very certain said code is deeply hosed in some fundamental way. Closure compilation is possibly the closest thing that there is in the JS world to an "interpreter" syntax check like php -l or ruby -c
Closure also warns you about potential issues such as missing parameters and undeclared or redefined variables. If you aren't seeing the warnings you expect, try increasing the warning level by invoking Closure with an option of --warning_level VERBOSE
PHP CodeSniffer can parse JavaScript as well as PHP and CSS. CodeSniffer ships with several different coding standards, (say phpcs -i to see them) which include many useful sniffs for JavaScript code including checks against inline control structures and superfluous whitespace.
Here is a list of JavaScript sniffs available in PHP CodeSniffer as of version 1.3.6 and here is a custom ruleset that would allow you to run them all at once. Using custom rulesets, it's easy to pick and choose the rules you want to apply. And you can even write your own sniffs if you want to enforce a particular "house style" that isn't supported out of the box. Afaik CodeSniffer is the only tool of the four mentioned here that supports customization and creation of new static analysis rules. One caveat though: CodeSniffer is also the slowest-running of any of the tools mentioned.