Why do you need to invoke an anonymous function on the same line?

Question

I was reading some posts about closures and saw this everywhere, but there is no clear explanation how it works - everytime I was just told to use it...:

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Answer 1

It's just how JavaScript works. You can declare a named function:

function foo(msg){
   alert(msg);
}

And call it:

foo("Hi!");

Or, you can declare an anonymous function:

var foo = function (msg) {
    alert(msg);
}

And call that:

foo("Hi!");

Or, you can just never bind the function to a name:

(function(msg){
   alert(msg);
 })("Hi!");

Functions can also return functions:

function make_foo() {
    return function(msg){ alert(msg) };
}

(make_foo())("Hi!");

It's worth nothing that any variables defined with "var" in the body of make_foo will be closed over by each function returned by make_foo. This is a closure, and it means that the any change made to the value by one function will be visible by another.

This lets you encapsulate information, if you desire:

function make_greeter(msg){
    return function() { alert(msg) };
}

var hello = make_greeter("Hello!");

hello();

It's just how nearly every programming language but Java works.