In this script, the \'
is used as an escape character for '
. It is being used to construct a string that can be treated as a function, containing a parameter wrapped in single quotes...
'expand(\''
The code above "opens" the string by adding expand(
literally, followed by an escaped single quote (\'
), and then another single quote to close that part of the string. So it becomes:
expand('
Then, the value of the element variable is concatenated:
'expand(\'' + element
Now, the string looks like this:
expand('elementVariableValue
Next, a new literal string is opened with an additional escaped single quote before closing parentheses:
'\')'
This results in:
')
Putting it all together gives us:
expand('elementVariableValue')
Ultimately, this is interpreted as a function for the timeout.
In JavaScript, both "
and '
can be used as string delimiters, so an easier alternative could have been:
setTimeout("expand('" + element + "')", 10);