Module pattern vs. instance of an anonymous constructor

Question

So there\'s this so-called module pattern for creating singletons with private members:

var foo = (function () {
    var _foo = \'private!\';
    return         


        

Answer 1

Douglas Crockford writes about the second one. As Greg says in his comments, I thought it was quite common, and I've used it in the past.

Edit: to actually answer your question - there's no downsides, the two are functionally equivalent (both create a closure containing the "private variables" and exposing other variables/methods publically), and have exactly the same browser support and performance characteristics. It just comes down to a matter of syntax - basically, where you put the () to actually invoke this function and get your closure, and whether you use the new keyword.