Question

The following code below is broken all it needs to work is var thing = new thing();, I understand this. My question is is there a way for the below code to work without declaring new? Something in the thing or something objects?

var thing = function(){

    var something = {};

    something.num = function(){
        return 5;
    };

    return something;

};

console.log(thing.num());

Answer 1

I believe you’re looking for this:

var thing = (function(){
    var something = {};
    something.num = function(){
        return 5;
    };
    return something;
}());

console.log(thing.num());

This will just execute that function immediately, and assign the return value (something) to thing. Your original code assigned the function itself to thing. If you want to keep the original function, you can use console.log(thing().num()).