Coffee Script Literals - Do not like mixed spaces and tabs

I spent a lot of time this morning trying to work out why my CoffeeScript literal was not working. I was trying to describe a hash containing an array containing hashes. I assumed my parse errors was simply me getting the format incorrect - Literal syntax examples for CoffeeScript available on the internet are pretty basic and don't describe nesting well.

Here was the parser error:

Error: In /Volumes/Data/users/ben/(snipped)/dashboard.coffee, Parse error on line 20: Unexpected '{'
    at Object.parseError (/Volumes/Data/users/ben/(snipped)/node_modules/coffee-script/lib/coffee-script/parser.js:477:11)


So I broke out a separate  .coffee file and tried to duplicate the problem, and failed. I made sure the command line version was the same one Node.js was calling. I duplicated the Node.js parser error in the command line. I put my (working) test code side-by-side with the broken code, and the parser still walked on by the test code to fail on the original code.

As the title implies, it turned out this was a simple mixed tabs and spaces problem. (I hadn't worked in .coffee files in my IDE prior and I remember needing to change the tab defaults).

So the moral of the story is to check whitespace first when you see CoffeeScript parser errors.

And for anyone wondering how to describe a hash-containing-array-containing-hashes literal in CoffeeScript, you write:


hashContainsArrayContainsHashes =
  key1: "value1"
  key2: [
      key211: "value211"
      key212: "value212"
    ,
      key221: "value221"
      key222: "value222"
    ]
  key3: "value3"


hope that helps someone!