Another Revision After some extensive examination, it seems evident that in a Node module, acquiring a reference to the global object is not possible. And truthfully, there shouldn't be a need for it; that concept goes hand-in-hand with the module mechanism. You import what you require and export what serves your purpose.
The existence of a global object in Node raises an intriguing question. In Rhino, such an entity definitely exists; there isn't an implicit wrapper function surrounding the code passed to Rhino from the Java container. Through the Java ScriptEngine mechanism (and presumably via Mozilla APIs in "naked" Rhino), there are methods to insert symbols into the global context, making them accessible to JavaScript as global object properties.
this is turning complicated The Node.js landscape appears to be evolving rapidly. My previous observations were accurate for Node 0.6.2, but in the 0.9.0-pre build I recently conducted, an object named "global" does exist, behaving somewhat akin to the global object found in a browser environment.
The following pertains to browsers, Rhino, and similar contexts
Utilizing this within the global scope is permissible. Should a label be necessary, one can be assigned.
var global = this;
var obj = "Hi!";
global.obj = "Bye"; // defines "obj"
An (arguably) typical practice involves encapsulating code within a function to safeguard the global namespace.
(function( global ) {
// all code
})( this );
Note: Bearing in mind my lack of expertise with Node, there may indeed be a distinct practice emerging within that realm.
revision — It has occurred to me that if Node encapsulates code from evaluated files within a function but doesn't pass this from the global context, locating it might be unfeasible. When utilizing "use strict" (recommended), interference with the global context becomes improbable anyway.