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What is the $ in jQuery?

We know that $ is an alias of jQuery, while using jQuery javascript framework.

But internally what $ is ?

I mean whether it is an object, function or other thing?

Answer 1

$ is a function object in jQuery. It can take a number of different types of parameters or methods. That’s why you will see things like:

$("#content")

In that use, it’s just a function – identical to:

jQuery("#content")

In this example, it returns an object that contains both the collection of DOM items matching the passed in CSS string and has a whole bunch of methods that let you operate on that collection of items it returned such as:

var html = $("#content").html()

to get the innerHTML of that DOM object.

It is usually used like a function $(params), but can also has methods as an object $.get().

But, most of all $ is just a symbol for a function object that also has methods. It could be called foo or anything else so it’s not anything unusual in Javascript.