What does the exclamation mark do before the function?

Question

!function () {}();

Answer 1

It returns whether the statement can evaluate to false. eg:

!false      // true
!true       // false
!isValid()  // is not valid

You can use it twice to coerce a value to boolean:

!!1    // true
!!0    // false

So, to more directly answer your question:

var myVar = !function(){ return false; }();  // myVar contains true

Edit: It has the side effect of changing the function declaration to a function expression. E.g. the following code is not valid because it is interpreted as a function declaration that is missing the required identifier (or function name):

function () { return false; }();  // syntax error