Interpreting a link statement in "Ajax on Rails"

Hi All,

In Chapter 2, the author adds the following line to create a hyperlink in app/views/chapter2/myaction.rhtml:

<p><a href="#" onclick="alert('Hello !');">Inline alert()</a></p>

Without the href clause, the text "Inline alert" would be rendered merely as plain text rather than as a hyperlink, so there would be nothing to click on to raise the "onclick" event.

But the '="#"' portion of that clause seems to be superfluous, at least in my Firefox browser, ver. 2.0.0.2. If the subject portion is not superfluous, how is it to be interpreted?

TIA, Richard