Welcome to the Treehouse Community
The Treehouse Community is a meeting place for developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels to get support. Collaborate here on code errors or bugs that you need feedback on, or asking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project. Join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today. (Note: Only Treehouse students can comment or ask questions, but non-students are welcome to browse our conversations.)
Looking to learn something new?
Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and a supportive community. Start your free trial today.

Jacob Tennyson
6,240 Pointschallenge task 1 0f 1 Scope
I have no idea whats going on here. Can somebody explain this differently.
When the 'hypotenuse' function is called the value of 'x' changes from 1. Fix it so that 'x' is still 1 in the global scope.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>JavaScript Foundations: Functions</title>
<style>
html {
background: #FAFAFA;
font-family: sans-serif;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>JavaScript Foundations</h1>
<h2>Functions: Scope</h2>
<script>
var x = 1;
var y = 1;
function hypotenuse(a , b) {
var cSquared = a * a + b * b;
x = Math.sqrt(cSquared);
return x;
}
hypotenuse(x, y);
</script>
</body>
</html>
1 Answer

Chris Shaw
26,662 PointsHi Jacob,
Essentially all this task is asking for is to prevent the local variable x
within the hypotenuse
function from altering the global variable x
, we can do this by scoping the variable x
in our function by prepending it with the var
keyword.
var x = Math.sqrt(cSquared);
Happy coding!
Jacob Tennyson
6,240 PointsJacob Tennyson
6,240 PointsThanks. I had a feeling it was really simple...This stuff is overwhelming sometimes.