Question

EDIT: I THOUGHT
The jQuery source I was looking at did something like this:

(function(){
    var bunchOfVariables = 7;
    jQuery = " ....."; 
    //....
});

I was wrong about that. Ignore this question.

---

I don’t understand what that does. Can someone please explain it?

This is the very first line in jQuery-1.3.2.js.

It appears to define an anonymous function, and NOT execute it. Where does the function go? How does it get run?

If I use code like that in a test script, it never gets called. On the other hand, if I follow it with open-close paren, then it gets called :

// never gets called
(function(){
    say("hello");
});
// gets called
(function(){
    say("buon giorno");
})();

Answer 1

The very last line of the jQuery source is

})();

The parentheses mean that the function is being called.