Question

I’m maintaining a javascript page and I’m just wondering what surrounding a variable with this will do?

<%= variable %>

I tried searching but wasn’t able to find anything relevant, so I’m sorry if this has been answered already! =)

Thanks!

Answer 1

These are ERB-style tags. They’re used in a variety of languages and formats, generally they are used to input simple variables into the page or do some logic on the variables passed to the page.

Seeing as it’s a Javascript page, you might want to check out the documentation for underscore.js’s templating engine, it will give you a good idea what’s going on.
http://underscorejs.org/#template

Another SO page that explains the differences between <%- %>, <%= %>, and <% %> tags in Underscore:
Boolean checks in underscore templates

Interpolate will put in the element as text (not HTML), escape will allow you to embed HTML, and evaluate will run what’s inside that as JS.