Javascript language and the $ in jquery

Question

I was wondering, how does the $. in $.ajax({...}); work? it doesnt make sense to me. Sure .ajax as a member make sense but $ isnt a variable name? or is it? How is it defined?

Answer 1

$ is the same as jQuery. That is, you can write jQuery.ajax(...) etc.

The confusing part is $ is a legal character in Javascript variable names. It doesn't have any special meaning, as it does in PHP or Perl, for instance.