Can someone explain what = $(); means in jQuery?
<p>I have the following in some code I am looking at:</p>

<pre><code>    // Save an empty jQuery in our cache for now.
    dialogs[id] = $();
</code></pre>

<p>Can anyone explain what it means. I have no idea about this concept. thanks</p>

<p><strong>Update:</strong> </p>

<p>Here's a bit more of the code:</p>

<pre><code>    var loadAndShowDialog = function (id, link, url) {
    var separator = url.indexOf('?') &gt;= 0 ? '&amp;' : '?';

    // Save an empty jQuery in our cache for now.
    dialogs[id] = $();

    // Load the dialog with the content=1 QueryString in order to get a PartialView
    $.get(url + separator + 'content=1')
        .done(function (content) {
            dialogs[id] = $('&lt;div class="modal-popup"&gt;' + content + '&lt;/div&gt;')
                .hide() // Hide the dialog for now so we prevent flicker
                .appendTo(document.body)
                .filter('div') // Filter for the div tag only, script tags could surface
                .dialog({ // Create the jQuery UI dialog
                    title: link.data('dialog-title'),
                    modal: true,
                    resizable: true,
                    draggable: true,
                    width: link.data('dialog-width') || 300
                })
                .find('form') // Attach logic on forms
                    .submit(formSubmitHandler)
                .end();
        });
};
</code></pre>

<p>I still cannot see the point of the first line. It's been explained to me that it creates an empty jquery object but I can't understand why. </p>
