What does the first semicolon imply? " ;( function( ) { } ) ( ); "

Question

I was just going through the source code of cordova.js, its structure is like

;(function() { cordova code I have yet to understand })();

Just curious what does the first semi-colon imply?

Is it just to make sure that there is a semicolon preceding the anonymous function or does it mean something else?

Implies that the author wants to make sure any previous statement is successfully terminated. Especially useful when combining several JS files into one. The `()` in JavaScript can be interpreted as the postfix "call" operator, which most likely yield an undesired behavior on the result of a previous expression. — , Jul 16 '13 at 14:01

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 16 '13 at 14:01

2

It is a defensive semicolon, this is in case someone concatenates some JavaScript before your code, and this concatenated code forgot to put a terminating semicolon.

answered Jul 16 '13 at 14:01

employee-0

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 16 '13 at 14:01

0

It's just to prevent an error if you combine multiple js files. So you can remove it if you want.

answered Jul 16 '13 at 14:01

Laszlo

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What does the first semicolon imply? " ;( function( ) { } ) ( ); "

2 Answers2