I'm trying to define the global object in JavaScript in a single line as follows:

var global = this.global || this;

The above statement is in the global scope. Hence in browsers the this pointer is an alias for the window object. Assuming that it's the first line of JavaScript to be executed in the context of the current web page, the value of global will always be the same as that of the this pointer or the window object.

In CommonJS implementations, such as RingoJS and node.js the this pointer points to the current ModuleScope. However, we can access the global object through the property global defined on the ModuleScope. Hence we can access it via the this.global property.

Hence this code snippet works in all browsers and in at least RingoJS and node.js, but I have not tested other CommomJS implementations. Thus I would like to know if this code will not yield correct results when run on any other CommonJS implementation, and if so how I may fix it.

Eventually, I intend to use it in a lambda expression for my implementation independent JavaScript framework as follows (idea from jQuery):

(function (global) {
    // javascript framework
})(this.global || this);