Comments on: console.log in Safari doesn’t “apply”. Bad Safari.

By: Martin

Martin — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:46:33 +0000

In fact, even Safari 5.1.2 (OSX Lion) still behaves the same. I was glad to find this page as I was unable to see any error in my code

By: Chubby

Chubby — Wed, 04 May 2011 21:57:22 +0000

Hey, that post leaves me feeling fooislh. Kudos to you!

By: jayfresh

jayfresh — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:17:48 +0000

Top stuff Tim, thanks.

By: Timothy Hatcher

Timothy Hatcher — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:32:42 +0000

If you just change:

console.log.apply(this, arguments)

to:

console.log.apply(console, arguments)

Everything should work.

And multiple arguments works in the newer WebKit (not Safari 3).

By: Michael Mahemoff

Michael Mahemoff — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:37:29 +0000

I find Safari’s behaviour here quite weird. Normally, you’d expect it to just ignore additional arguments. It’s as if it’s saying “if (arguments.length > 2) throw exception”. An explicit check like that is the only way it could be doing something as annoying as this! That, or it’s some native thing where the error is actually coming from calling a C/C++ function with the wrong number of args.

I often use this idiom on the fly, so I wanted a simpler bit of code that I can write quickly without having to look up. I think the following will achieve the same effect as above with less finger typing:

if (console && console.firebug) { console.log.apply(this, arguments); }

By: Saq Imtiaz

Saq Imtiaz — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:33:29 +0000

Having given it some more thought, I guess the difference is that without using apply the arguments would be passed as an array which isn’t quite as useful but should still work.

By: Saq Imtiaz

Saq Imtiaz — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:27:32 +0000

How about:
# function log() {
# if(console) {
# console.log(arguments);
# }
# }

That should work just as well without needing to use apply, or am I missing something?