Is "clear" a reserved word in Javascript?
<p>I just spent a long time figuring out that I shouldn't use clear() as the name of a function in Javascript:</p>

<pre><code>&lt;head&gt;
    &lt;script type="text/javascript" src="Array.js"&gt;&lt;/script&gt;
&lt;/head&gt;
&lt;body&gt;
    Hello!!!!&lt;br&gt;
    &lt;button type="button" onClick="clear()" id="ppp"&gt;Shoo!&lt;/button&gt;&lt;br&gt;
    &lt;button type="button" onClick="add()" id="add"&gt;Add a few elements&lt;/button&gt;&lt;br&gt;
    &lt;button type="button" onClick="check()" id="check"&gt;Check the array&lt;/button&gt;&lt;br&gt;
    &lt;p id="results"&gt;Results will appear here.&lt;/p&gt;
    &lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;
initialize();
    &lt;/script&gt;
&lt;/body&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>Here's Array.js:</p>

<pre><code>var results;

function initialize(){
 results = document.getElementById("results");
}

function add() {
results.firstChild.data="add";    
}

function clear() {
results.firstChild.data = "Hello?";
}

function check() {
results.firstChild.data = "check";
}
</code></pre>

<p>Symptoms: Clicking the 'add' and 'check' buttons gives me the result I expect, but clicking the 'clear' button does nothing.</p>

<p>If I rename <strong>clear()</strong> to <strong>clearxyz()</strong>, it works fine. </p>

<p>My questions:</p>

<ol>
<li>Is "clear" a reserved word? I don't see it on the list:
<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Reserved_Words">https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Reserved_Words</a></li>
<li>Is there a debugging trick I should be using to figure this kind of
thing out in the future? It took me a long time (I'm a noob!) to
figure out that the name of the function was my problem.</li>
</ol>

<p>Many thanks.
Edit: I'm using Firefox 6.0, and I added a line break to show where Array.js starts.</p>
