G'day:
I just spotted this, and decided to look into it:

20:36 STATE CHANGED 3042593 (9.0.1) Bug 84833:(Watson Migration Closure)[ANeff] Bug for: Clearing local scope o…: http://t.co/9VX1qJx73J
— CF Notifications (@CFNotifications) November 28, 2014

This defines a bugsituationbug in ColdFusion wherein if one deletes a local-scoped variable from a function, then assign an unscoped variable, that new variable goes back in the local scope, not in the variables scope.

Here's the repro, courtesy of Aaron Neff:

// localScopeBug.cfm
function myFunction() {
    var myVar="";
    structDelete(local, "myVar", true);
    structClear(local);
    myVar="value for myVar";
    writeOutput(variables.myVar);
}
myFunction();

On ColdFusion (11, but obviously earlier too), I get this:

The following information is meant for the website developer for debugging purposes.

Error Occurred While Processing Request

Element MYVAR is undefined in VARIABLES. The error occurred in C:/wwwroot/blogExamples/coldfusion/bugs/localScopeBug.cfm: line 9 7 : structClear(local); 8 : myVar="value for myVar"; 9 : writeOutput(variables.myVar); 10 : } 11 : myFunction();

On Railo, on the other hand, I get the more expected:

value for myVar

I'd not be raising this fairly edge-case-y situation other than for Adobe's reaction to it. It's just been closed as:

For once had you closed it as "can't be arsed", I'd probably agree with you. However it is a bug.

Or is it?

What do you think?

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BTW: I know I am falling behind on two things: feeding back on the survey about PHP date handling, and also following up the quiz from a few weeks back. This week has been crazy at work, and I just can't be arsed looking at a computer when I get home. Once again there's rugby to watch this weekend, but I might have a chance to look at some code on Saturday morning, and perhaps Sunday. All of this is still on my radar.

Cheers.

--
Adam