Dust.js is a JavaScript templating engine, though there are some differences of the syntax between Dust.js and JavaScript.

Identifier

Dust.js | Template Syntax Reference:

A Dust key is one or more of the following characters: a-z, A-Z, _ (underscore), $, 0-9, or -

NOTE: The first character of a reference cannot be 0-9 or -.

vs.

Grammar and types - JavaScript | MDN:

A JavaScript identifier must start with a letter, underscore (_), or dollar sign ($); subsequent characters can also be digits (0-9). Because JavaScript is case sensitive, letters include the characters "A" through "Z" (uppercase) and the characters "a" through "z" (lowercase).

You can use most of ISO 8859-1 or Unicode letters such as å and ü in identifiers. You can also use the Unicode escape sequences as characters in identifiers.

Conclusion:

Dust.js allows - (minus sign) while JavaScript does not;
JavaScript allows Unicode letters while Dust.js does not.

Truthy / Falsy

Truth test is done in Dust.js for {#section/}, {?exists/} and {^not-exists/}.

  Dust.js JavaScript
true Truthy Truthy
{} Truthy Truthy
false Falsy Falsy
"" Falsy Falsy
0 Truthy Falsy
[] Falsy Truthy

Section Iteration

In Dust.js, during the execution of the section iteration ({#names}...{/names}), two variables are defined:

  • $idx - the index of the current iteration starting with zero; and
  • $len - the number of elements in the data being iterated.