Playing with JavaScript callbacks

Moin Moin,

while watching a stupid film in TV, what can you better do than playing with Firebug’s JS console. Actually I played with callbacks. Here ist what I did:

console.log("FIRST WAY:")

var fn = (function(param) {
    console.log("param in fn (first way): " + param);
}('bla'));

var action = function(callback) {
    callback;
}

console.log("calling action:");
action(fn);
console.log("action is a: " + typeof action);
console.log("fn is a: " + typeof fn);

console.log(" ")
console.log("OTHER WAY:")

var fn = function(param) {
    console.log("param in fn (other way): " + param);
}

var action = function(callback) {
    var param = 'other way';
    callback(param);
}

console.log("calling action:");
action(fn);
console.log("action is a: " + typeof action);
console.log("fn is a: " + typeof fn);

Result:

FIRST WAY:
param in fn (first way): bla
calling action:
action is a: function
fn is a: undefined

OTHER WAY:
calling action:
param in fn (other way): other way
action is a: function
fn is a: function

Hm - what’s that? Yeah - just playing around. Actually there are two things which are kind of interesting. First, the anonymous function is called immediately after it was built. Even though it is held in a variable (fn).
The second thing is, that the typeof fn is undefined. Hm … I don’t know why at the moment I am writing this. I would expect it is a string. I will examine this further.

One side note: you have to call the callback in action() in the first approach as a string because it’s not a function - that’s why I assume it should be typeof string.

The conclusion is: don’t use the first way because it does not work and does not make sense at all.