Question

I was reading the great article about binding and unbinding events (because I am a js beginner using jQuery) on Karl Swedberg’s blog, and I became totally puzzled at this part of the code (simplified for brevity):

    function addItemUnbind() {       $Add a button but it won't have it's event added;       addItemUnbind();   }); 

Why is it that by putting the same function within itself it doesn’t keep executing into an infinite loop? However, it is used to re-bind the event to the element…!?

Answer 1

Because the call is within an internal function.

E.g. He does some stuff in addItemUnbind() and one of those things is to bind a function to a button click.

This function is then declared e.g. within addItemUnbind() there is:

.bind('click', function() {   var $newLi = $('<li class='special'>special and new <button>I am new</button></li>');   $(this).parent().after($newLi);   addItemUnbind();   } 

The code within the braces here isn’t evaluated when addItemUnbind() is called but rather when the click happens.