In an example of backbone.js I find code in the HTML surrounded by <%= %>. I would like to know what syntax / language this is.
<% if (managerName) { %>
<li>
<a href="#employees/<%= managerId %>">
<div class="story">
<b>View Manager</b><br/>
<span class="metadata"><%= managerName %></span>
</div>
<img src="css/images/manager.png" class="action-icon"/>
</a>
</li>
<% } %>
Sorry if this is basic question but googling it turns out to be harder than expected.
Since it is related to backbone.js, it would be an underscore.js template. Have a look here or here for some examples and more information on how to use it. One way to find out if it is used by a JavaScript templating engine would be to find out if it lives inside a <script> tag. It is quite likely that you copied that code snippet out of a script block that looked similar to this <script type="text/template"></script>, if it was an underscore.js template. I personally don't know any other JavaScript templating engines which use the exact same syntax as underscore.js, there could be another one out there.