title: Why assign this variable to itself in this var declaration?
body: <p>I was reading Ben Cherry's "<a href="http://www.adequatelygood.com/2010/3/JavaScript-Module-Pattern-In-Depth" rel="nofollow">JavaScript Module Pattern: In-Depth</a>", and he had some example code that I didn't quite understand. Under the <em>Cross-File Private State</em> heading, there is some example code that has the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>var _private = my._private = my._private || {}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This doesn't seem to be different from writing something like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>var _private = my._private || {}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What's happening here and how are these two declarations different?</p>