Question

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What does the leading semicolon in JavaScript libraries do?

I am reading the jquery flexslider source code and i see a ;
before the document ready call

;(function ($) {...

Can anyone tell me why we need a ; ?

Answer 1

It’s included in case…

• the code gets grouped into the same file with other code, and

• the other code didn’t include a semicolon at the end.

---

For example…

    (function() {

       // some bundled plugin

    })()  // <--- no semicolon

//  v--- semicolon saved the day    
    ;(function ($) {

       // flexslider plugin

    })();

Without the semicolon, the () around the flexslider plugin would have been interpreted as a function call, and would have tried to call the return result of the previous function.