google analytics - What is the advantage of using unescape on document.write to load javascript?

Question

The code that you have to add to track a web page with google analytics looks like:

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-XXXXX");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>

What's the advantage of doing these line:

document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));

versus these line:

document.write("<script src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'></script>");

I wrote some code that does something similar (load javascript "via" document write) but it does not use unescape and I am wondering if I should follow the google-analytics example.

Answer 1

It means the code will work in XML / XHTML and HTML without having to mess with CDATA