What does “use strict” do in JavaScript, and what is the reasoning behind it?

Question

Recently, I ran some of my JavaScript code through Crockford\'s JSLint, and it gave the following error:

Problem at line 1 character 1: Missing \"use

Answer 1

If people are worried about using use strict it might be worth checking out this article:

ECMAScript 5 'Strict mode' support in browsers. What does this mean?
NovoGeek.com - Krishna's weblog

It talks about browser support, but more importantly how to deal with it safely:

function isStrictMode(){
    return !this;
} 
/*
   returns false, since 'this' refers to global object and 
   '!this' becomes false
*/

function isStrictMode(){   
    "use strict";
    return !this;
} 
/* 
   returns true, since in strict mode the keyword 'this'
   does not refer to global object, unlike traditional JS. 
   So here, 'this' is 'undefined' and '!this' becomes true.
*/