What does "myscript.js?1234567" do?

As much as I hate coming across as a blithering idiot, here I go:

Recently, I noticed that some web developers are using something like the following syntax:

<script src="/scripts/somefile.js?1634528" type="text/javascript"></script>

Code (markup):

What does this do? Obviously, the .js file is not going to read in the value after the "?" — but there must be some reason (or benefit) for doing this.

Looking at the code inside the files that were referenced this way, there was nothing special about them. As expected, the value following ".js?" had no bearings on the JavaScript code at all.

So what is this all about? I need to know, really.


Thanks much.

 

Maybe is a method to avoid cached (old) version of that .js file. So, updating that variable, you're forcing the new version to be loaded on browser.

 

ajsa52 is probably right. Refresh the page and see if the number changes.

 

With mod_rewrite this somefile.js can be generated by php for example. But I don't see any reason to do this, maybe some kind of user tracking?