On the modernized Search Test Cases screen (gui/templates/search/searchView.html), the browser console showed Uncaught ReferenceError: p is not defined on every page load once the test-project context loaded. The URL deep-link prefill (?name=API&importance=2, etc.) depends on the URLSearchParams instance p, so deep links opened with criterion parameters never prefilled the criteria form.

var p = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search); was declared INSIDE the jQuery $(function () {...}) ready handler (searchView.html:201 pre-fix). JavaScript var is function-scoped, so p was local to that anonymous callback only.

The prefill loop lives in loadContext() — a separate top-level function whose .done() callback executes after the asynchronous context request finishes:

loadContext() { ... $.getJSON(API + '?action=context&tproject_id=' + tprojectId).done(function (r) {
    ...
    [ 'targetTestCase','version','name', ... 'importance','status' ].forEach(function (k) {
        var v = p.get(k);   // ReferenceError: p is not defined
        ...

Because p does not exist in loadContext's scope, the JS engine throws at the first forEach iteration, which aborts the entire .done callback — nothing was ever written into the form, so deep links silently lost their criteria.

Minimal hoisting fix (commit 39d9c5b11):

1. var p = null; moved to top-level module scope (next to tprojectId/tplanId) so the identifier is shared by every function in the page.
2. The ready handler now assigns p = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search); instead of re-declaring it with var — the same instance is then readable from loadContext().

No other code changed for this defect; no new user-facing strings, so no i18n bundle changes. The same commit also carried the #823 fix (unguarded DataTable() init with a plain-<tbody> fallback, the searchQuickView/#799 pattern.)

Recreated the fixture (project SEARCH824 id=1, prefix S824-, priority enabled, plan 9, 2 TCs via tmp/fixtures_824.php) and opened:

/gui/templates/search/searchView.html?tproject_id=1&tplan_id=9&name=API&importance=2

• Console: list_console_messages → 0 errors (post-fix); context request /api/search/index.php?action=context&tproject_id=1 → HTTP 200.
• Prefill (DOM, post-fix): #name = API, #importance = 2, prefix addon S824-, page title SEARCH824 - Search Test Cases.
• Find with prefilled criteria: (1 matches), row S824-1 [v1] :: API Key Display and Regenerate, footer 1 matches — proving the prefilled values are actually applied to the query.
• importance=3 (non-matching) → (0 matches) with no_records_found — correct data-driven behaviour.
• Event Viewer (events table): no new Error/Warning (search is read-only).

• gui/templates/search/searchView.html