Using require without export

Question

I have this code (which works perfectly well) which I\'ve borrowed from an online resource:

var express = require(\'express\');
var bodyParser = require(\'body-p         


        

Answer 1

Besides requiring a module that doesn't include exports to run it's side effects it's also possible for a module to define variables in the global scope which can be accessed in the file where the module is required. This happens by defining variables without the var keyword. It's not a good or common practice, but you might encounter it somewhere so it's good to know what is going on.

Example:

// foo.js
bar = 5;

And

// test.js
require('./foo');

console.log(bar);
// prints 5

If barwas defined as:

var bar = 5;

it would be in the module scope and not be accessible in test.js.