Trying to get the value of a global variable inside the result() function of the jquery autocomplete

I'm have this code below. As you can see I'm trying to use the variable clients in alert function of jqueryautocomplete.

The problem: when i select an item from the autocomplete drop-down menu it prints "undefined" instead of the value of the the var. Why?

jQuery(document).ready(function() {

  var clients = 0;

  alert(clients); //this prints 0.

  jQuery("#user_autocomplete")
  .autocomplete('autocompleteUser', jQuery.extend({}, {
    dataType: 'json',
    parse: function(data) {

      var parsed = [];
      for (key in data) {

    parsed[parsed.length] = { data: [ data[key], key ], value: data[key], result: data[key] };
      }

      return parsed;

      }
  } ))
  .result(function(event, data) {
   $('#field_开发者_JAVA技巧users').append('<div class="user_choosen" id=' + data[1] + '>' + data[0] +'<a class="link_delete_user" href="#" onclick="javascript:deleteUser(' + data[1] +')">Delete</a></div>'); 
    $('#user_autocomplete').val(''); 

    alert(clients); //this prints undefined

  });

});

Regards

Javi

---

That's not a global variable, that's a variable defined in the scope of the anonymous function run when the document is ready.

I believe that scope may lost when running the anonymous function passed into results method of the auto complete.