What do they mean by anonymous function?

Question

Please help

js/app.js

//Problem: It look gross in smaller browser widths and small devices
//Solution: To hide the text links and swap them out with a more appropriate navigation

//Create a select and append to #menu
var $select = $("<select></select>");
$("#menu").append($select);

//Cycle over menu links
$("#menu a").each(function) {}; 
  //Create an option
  //option's value is the href
  //option's text is the text of link
  //append option to select

//Create button 
//Bind click to button
  //Go to select's location
//Modify CSS to hide links on small width and show button and select
  //Also hides select and button on larger width and show's links
//Deal with selected options depending on current page

index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/style.css" type="text/css" media="screen" title="no title" charset="utf-8">
</head>
<body>
    <div id="menu">
        <ul>
            <li class="selected"><a href="index.html">Home</a></li>
            <li><a href="about.html">About</a></li>
            <li><a href="contact.html">Contact</a></li>
            <li><a href="support.html">Support</a></li>
            <li><a href="faqs.html">FAQs</a></li>
            <li><a href="events.html">Events</a></li>
        </ul>
    </div>
    <h1>Home</h1>
    <p>This is the home page.</p>
    <script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.0.min.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
    <script src="js/app.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
</body>
</html>

Answer 1 · 2017-09-19T18:30:40Z

September 19, 2017 6:30pm

So an anonymous function in JS is a function without a name and is stored in a variable.

Normal function

function hello() {
  console.log('Hello');
}

hello(); //returns Hello

Anonymous function

const hello = function () {
  console.log('Hello');
}

hello(); //returns Hello

Anonymous functions have the advantage of being passed along your code this way and making your code more succinct. Along with cleaner code, it also allows you to DRY your code.

If you are still a little fuzzy on the real difference go ahead and check out https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_function_definition.asp

Answer 2 · 2017-09-20T05:47:45Z

September 20, 2017 5:47am

They are essentially the same. By naming your function you make it available for reuse in the scope of where it was defined and have a way to call it directly.

You might have a bunch of functions defined within the scope. You can think about it as once they are defined there are just a bunch of functions hanging out waiting for you to put them to work. We give them names so that when you need to call them, they know which one you want. Essentially yelling at our group of functions "Hey, function xyz, time to come do your thing".

We don't need to give them a name if we are never going to call them directly, i.e they are part of another function. Then it's more like "Hey you, do your thing".

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Vy Nguyen

Vy Nguyen

What do they mean by anonymous function?

2 Answers

Brandon Benefield

Brandon Benefield

justdave

justdave