Question

I’ve seen this pattern a lot in javascript files:

(function ($) 
{
   //Perform operation X
}(jQuery));

Is there a difference between placing the above code in a js file vs the following:

function myFunc($) 
{
   //Perform operation X
}
myFunc(jQuery);

Or is it simply more terse?

Answer 1

Your second snippet defines a public symbol, myFunc. If anyone else is using that symbol for a library, you would overwrite it and could destroy its functionality. The first snippet doesn’t have a name, and is therefore safer.