No there is no real difference.
It’s just a convention that helps you remember that a
isn’t the DOM element but it’s a jQuery object.
var a = document.getElementById('a');
a.innerHTML //fine
var $a = $('#a');
$a.html() // fine
Ohhh, and by the way, neither a
or $a
are good variable names … you should use meaningful variable names not abc characters.
Read the jQuery info tag on this very same site:
Variable Naming Conventions
jQuery wrapped variables are usually named starting with ‘$’ to distinguish them from standard JavaScript objects.
var $this = $(this);