In javascript you can tell the javascript parser to be strict - that is not to allow any errors, like forget to usevarwhen defining code.
Below is a codeblock and the error log for code using and not using 'use strict'.
'use strict';
try {
a=1
b=''
$('.output1').html('passed');
} catch(e) {
$('.output1').html(e.message);
}
'use strict';
try {
var a=1;
var b='';
$('.output2').html('passed');
} catch(e) {
$('.output2').html(e.message);
}
As you can se above the first test fails as var is not used when defining a variable. Also note that 'use strict' can be used in a function making the strict parsing local to that function. I belive that best practice is not to have use strict in live code, as IE9 aparently fails to parse it.