Ampersand Question

Projects Programming
1

Hi Folks,

I've been raking my brain to try and understand what the Ampersand (&) in this function actually does:

function SwitchCheck()   {
                if (SW_form.SW1.checked) {
                    strSW1 = "&SW1=1";
                }
                else {
                    strSW1 = "&SW1=0";
                }
}

Essentially what this function does is check's to see if a checkbox contained in a form named SW_Form is checked or not and assigned a value to variable strSW1 accordingly. My question is, what is the difference between saying strSW1 = "&SW1=1"; and strtSW1 = "SW1=1"; ?
thanks !!!

2

What is strSW1 used for? Is it returned by a browser as a parameter?

3

Those are string literals.

With no context, it is impossible to answer your question.

It is like asking

 strSW1 = "blueMoon";

and wondering about

strSW1 = "theBlueMoon";

So... what's the entire problem where this comes up?

a7

4

It does nothing in that function. It is just part of a character string, which is probably intended to be sent somewhere.

5

To find out what it does, remove it and see what breaks. If nothing breaks it may do nothing and just be cosmetic.

6

One string has & another doesn’t have it. This is the difference. Who knows how it used later

7

it's part of querystring and will be put into a URL to inform the web server of the state of a switch.

8

Thanks for all the reply's.
I think "6v6gt" is correct.
See the following url for additional context from the original code:

3/4 down the page is were the switches are discussed, and I can now see how this is related to the url that gets passed to the server on this line of the code in my specific application:
request.open("GET", "ajax_inputs" + strSW1 + strSW2 + strSW3 + strSW4 + nocache, true);
I got confused and started down the rabbit hole of trying to understand why a pointer access operator was being used... Obviously, this was a bad assumption made on my part... Thanks for your help all...