FireFox/Netscape location.hash to empty string --> infinite loop

[Stewart]

Dear javascripters,

Through a frustrating afternoon of debugging I appear to have
discovered something:

Setting location.hash to an empty string in the global namespace (not
inside a function) Mozilla/FireFox/Netscape causes the browser to go
into an infinite loop, apparently attempting to reload the page.
ie:
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
// DON'T DO THIS!!
this.document.location.hash = '';
//-->
</script>

I'm surely not the only one to have discovered this, but I didn't find
any references to it upon searching the web.

It works fine in IE6, behaving identical with:
this.document.location.hash = '#';

So do that, or put it in a function, and control when the function gets
called.

Or, as I'm creating this script on the fly in a JSP, don't produce that
code if the reference is empty or null:
<logic:notEmpty name="anchorRef">
this.document.location.hash = '<bean:write name="anchorRef"/>';
</logic:notEmpty>

Wish I'd known 4 hours ago....

Stewart

[Stewart]

OK, so it's happening in IE6 too, but under different circumstances.
Clicking on a link refering back to this page is sending it into an
infinite loop, but not sure what's wrong with the link at this point.
But commenting out the location.hash = definitely stops it happening.

[Lee]

Stewart said:

Dear javascripters,

Through a frustrating afternoon of debugging I appear to have
discovered something:

Setting location.hash to an empty string in the global namespace (not
inside a function) Mozilla/FireFox/Netscape causes the browser to go
into an infinite loop, apparently attempting to reload the page.

I don't understand why you would expect it to do anything else.
By setting the hash attribute, you're telling the browser to
reload the page.

[Stewart]

I am?

I was wanting it to scroll down to the <a name="anchorRef">Interesting
bit</a>

I thought location.assign(), location.reload() and location.replace()
were commands to reload the page.

The reference I looked up (www.w3schools.com) said: "hash - Sets or
returns the part of the href property that follows the hash sign (#)"

I guess though if window.location = 'http://new_url'; causes a page
reload, then setting the hash might do so also.

Fair enough.