I recently stumbled upon the new Destructuring Javascript feature that is available with ES6.
Found out a weird situation where i am not really sure of what is going on. Hopefully you guys will help me understand.
If i type this in my console:
var car={}
var {undefinedProp: es6Magic} = car;
I get an undefined. Looks fair to me, since car has no defined property.
But if i use an If statement around it i get a different and unexpected result:
function testPriorities() {
var car = {}
if ({
undefinedProp: es6Magic
} = car) {
console.log('how do i even get here', es6Magic);
}
}
What the hell?
Why is that es6Magic is assigned with an undefined value and it still returns true?
What rules are being applied when running the if statement?
If i type this in my console:
var car={}
var {undefinedProp: es6Magic} = car;
I get an undefined.
But not because es6Magic has an undefined value (it does, I mean it's not the reason). It's because variable declarations have no result value, and your complete snippet does not have a result (unlike expression statements).
But if i use an If statement around it i get a different and unexpected result:
var car = {}
if ({undefinedProp: es6Magic} = car) {
console.log('how do i even get here', es6Magic);
}
I guess that is true because the car exists, but why does it evaluate differently from the console?
Actually you'll still get the undefined result from the last statement, after the console.log output.
And yes, the if condition evaluates to a truthy value because car exists - that's what assignment expressions always do. This doesn't even have anything to do with destructuring, … = car always evaluates to the right hand side car regardless what the left hand side target expression is.
You can also try
> var car = {}, es6Magic;
undefined
> ({undefinedProp: es6Magic} = car); // no `var` - plain assignment!
[object Object]
The console shows undefined because a variable declaration doesn't return anything, it declares a variable.
The second version works because {foo: bar} is interpreted as an object literal, which you are assigning to. That returns the object, which is truthy. I would expect that to throw an error, which it does in the console:
Uncaught SyntaxError: Invalid destructuring assignment target
The literal shouldn't be a valid target, but a transpiler would most likely break that.
The if statement executes because you are basically doing assignment inside if statement which always return the assigned value which in this case is {} which evaluates to true.
var b
if(b={}){console.log("what!!")}
function a(){
var car={}
return {undefinedProp: es6Magic} = car;
}
console.log(a())
I was writing some code in JavaScript. When I accidentally came across this.
undefined = 'some value' //does not give any error
true = 'some value'; //gives error
null = 'some value'; //gives error
How is it that first statement is valid whereas the other two are invalid. From what I know both undefined, true, and null are values you can assign to some variable, so all these should be invalid statements.
From MDN:
undefined is a property of the global object; i.e., it is a variable
in global scope. The initial value of undefined is the primitive value
undefined.
Hence, you can assign the value to undefined unlike true and null which are reserved keywords. Note that this is the same case with NaN as well which is again not a reserved keyword and hence, you can assign any value to it.
Just to add more to this, it doesn't matter even if you are assigning a value to undefined, it will not write to it as it is a readonly property.
Quoting from MDN again.
In modern browsers (JavaScript 1.8.5 / Firefox 4+), undefined is a
non-configurable, non-writable property per the ECMAScript 5
specification. Even when this is not the case, avoid overriding it.
Prefer using strict-mode in your JavaScript by declaring "use strict" at the very top of the file or inside a function to avoid such things. Using something like
"use strict";
undefined = 'test'; //will raise an error, refer to [1]
[1] VM1082:2 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot assign to read
only property 'undefined' of object '#'
This is because undefined is not a reserved word in JavaScript, even though it has a special meaning. So it can be assigned a value and the whole statement is valid. Whereas true and null are reserved words and can't be assigned values.
For reference: JavaScript Reserved Words
I quote directly from the MD Js docs.
While it is possible to use it as an identifier (variable name) in any
scope other than the global scope (because undefined is not a reserved
word), doing so is a very bad idea that will make your code difficult
to maintain and debug.
//DON'T DO THIS
// logs "foo string"
(function() { var undefined = 'foo'; console.log(undefined, typeof undefined); })();
// logs "foo string"
(function(undefined) { console.log(undefined, typeof undefined); })('foo');
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/undefined
You can not declare a variable with the name of reserved words(keywords) in any language either it's scripting or programming.
if you want to use this you can use _ underscore at the very first of the varibale name.
like: _true , _null or _anythingwhatyouwant
I am trying to pick a reliable operator for "if variable is not defined or initialize, then declare and initialize".
Consider an example (the semantics is not really important):
window.test ?= 123
location.origin ||= location.protocol + "//" + location.host
This gets translated into the following Javascript:
var _ref;
if ((_ref = window.test) == null) {
window.test = 123;
}
location.origin || (location.origin = location.protocol + "//" + location.host);
Which is a better way to do this? It appears to me that the ||= operator is more reliable because it also accounts for "undefined" But why does CoffeeScript promote the use of ?= instead? Am I missing something?
In JavaScript, undefined == null1, so it does account for undefined. ||= is usually undesirable because it will overwrite any falsy value even when it's not null or undefined, e.g., zero or false.
1In JavaScript, == sometimes implicitly coerces values, and one of those cases is null and undefined. (See items 2 and 3 of section 11.9.3 in the specification).
I am trying to pick a reliable operator for "if variable is not defined or initialize, then declare and initialize".
It is impossible to conditionally declare a variable in a host that is compliant with ECMA-262. It is possible to test for the presence of global variables since they are made properties of the global (window) object (but it won't tell you if they were created as global variables or properties). To test for a global:
// In global scope:
var global = this;
// Wherever:
if (global.hasOwnProperty('foo')) { // throws an error in IE
// foo is a property of the global object
}
It is impossible to test for a local variable (say within a function) since you can't access the variable object or execution context object to test it, all you can do is test against undefined or use try..catch (ugly). But needing to do that is very poor design.
If the intention is to conditionally create a property of the global object, then the above leads to:
if (!global.hasOwnProperty('foo')) { // throws an error in IE
global.foo = 'whatever';
}
However, if you also want to test if the property has been assigned a value, then:
if (typeof global.foo == 'undefined') { // works everywhere
Seems more appropriate as if the above returns true, then either it hasn't been declared, hasn't been assigned a value, or has been assigned a value of undefined. In all cases, you probably want to now assign a value.
Testing against null does not seem sensible, since the only way it will have that value is if it was explicitly assigned (which means the property exists and has been assigned a value).
I've been writing JavaScript for quite a long time now, and I have never had a reason to use null. It seems that undefined is always preferable and serves the same purpose programmatically. What are some practical reasons to use null instead of undefined?
I don't really have an answer, but according to Nicholas C. Zakas, page 30 of his book "Professional JavaScript for Web Developers":
When defining a variable that is meant
to later hold an object, it is
advisable to initialize the variable
to null as opposed to anything else.
That way, you can explicitly check for the value null to determine if
the variable has been filled with an object reference at a later time
At the end of the day, because both null and undefined coerce to the same value (Boolean(undefined) === false && Boolean(null) === false), you can technically use either to get the job done. However, there is right way, IMO.
Leave the usage of undefined to the JavaScript compiler.
undefined is used to describe variables that do not point to a reference. It is something that the JS compiler will take care for you. At compile time the JS engine will set the value of all hoisted variables to undefined. As the engine steps through the code and values becomes available the engine will assign respective values to respective variables. For those variables for whom it did not find values, the variables would continue to maintain a reference to the primitive undefined.
Only use null if you explicitly want to denote the value of a variable as having "no value".
As #com2gz states: null is used to define something programmatically empty. undefined is meant to say that the reference is not existing. A null value has a defined reference to "nothing". If you are calling a non-existing property of an object, then you will get undefined. If I would make that property intentionally empty, then it must be null so you know that it's on purpose.
TLDR; Don't use the undefined primitive. It's a value that the JS compiler will automatically set for you when you declare variables without assignment or if you try to access properties of objects for which there is no reference. On the other hand, use null if and only if you intentionally want a variable to have "no value".
Sidebar: I, personally, avoid explicitly setting anything to undefined (and I haven't come across such a pattern in the many codebases/third party libs I've interacted with). Also, I rarely use null. The only times I use null is when I want to denote the value of an argument to a function as having no value, i.e.,:
function printArguments(a,b) {
console.log(a,b);
}
printArguments(null, " hello") // logs: null hello
null and undefined are essentially two different values that mean the same thing. The only difference is in the conventions of how you use them in your system. As some have mentioned, some people use null for meaning "no object" where you might sometimes get an object while undefined means that no object was expected (or that there was an error). My problem with that is its completely arbitrary, and totally unnecessary.
That said, there is one major difference - variables that aren't initialized (including function parameters where no argument was passed, among other things) are always undefined.
Which is why in my code I never use null unless something I don't control returns null (regex matching for example). The beauty of this is it simplifies things a lot. I never have to check if x === undefined || x === null, I can just check x === undefined. And if you're in the habit of using == or simply stuff like if(x) ... , stop it.
!x will evaluate to true for an empty string, 0, null, NaN - i.e. things you probably don't want. If you want to write javascript that isn't awful, always use triple equals === and never use null (use undefined instead). It'll make your life way easier.
undefined is where no notion of the thing exists; it has no type, and it's never been referenced before in that scope; null is where the thing is known to exist, but it has no value.
Everyone has their own way of coding and their own internal semantics, but over the years I have found this to be the most intuitive advice that I give people who ask this question: when in doubt, do what JavaScript does.
Let's say you are working with object properties like options for a jQuery plugin...ask yourself what value JavaScript gives a property that has yet to be defined -- the answer is undefined. So in this context, I would initialize these types of things with 'undefined' to be consistent with JavaScript (for variables, you can do var myVar; instead of var myVar = undefined;).
Now let's say you are doing DOM manipulation...what value does JavaScript assign to non-existent elements? The answer is null. This is the value I would initialize with if you are creating a placeholder variable that will later hold a reference to an element, document fragment, or similar that relates to the DOM.
If you're working with JSON, then a special case needs to be made: for undefined property values, you should either set them to "" or null because a value of undefined is not considered proper JSON format.
With this said, as a previous poster has expressed, if you find that you're initializing stuff with null or undefined more than once in a blue moon, then maybe you should reconsider how you go about coding your app.
You might adopt the convention suggested here, but there really is no good reason to. It is not used consistently enough to be meaningful.
In order to make the convention useful, you first must know that the called function follows the convention. Then you have to explicitly test the returned value and decide what to do. If you get undefined, you can assume that some kind of error occurred that the called function knew about. But if an error happened, and the function knew about it, and it is useful to send that out into the wider environment, why not use an error object? i.e. throw an error?
So at the end of the day, the convention is practically useless in anything other than very small programs in simple environments.
A few have said that it is ok to initialise objects to null. I just wanted to point out that destructuring argument defaults don't work with null. For example:
const test = ({ name } = {}) => {
console.log(name)
}
test() // logs undefined
test(null) // throws error
This requires performing null checks prior to calling the function which may happen often.
A useful property in null that undefined does not qualifies:
> null + 3
3
> undefined + 3
NaN
I use null when I want to 'turn off' a numeric value,
or to initialize some. My last use was manipulating css transform:
const transforms = { perspective : null, rotateX : null };
// if already set, increase, if not, set to x
runTimeFunction((x) => { trasforms.perspective += x; });
// still useful, as setting perspective to 0 is different than turning it off
runTimeFunction2((x) => { transforms.perspective = null; });
// toCss will check for 'null' values and not set then at all
runTimeFunction3(() => { el.style.transform = toCss(transforms); });
Not sure if I should use this property thought...
DOM nodes and elements are not undefined, but may be null.
The nextSibling of the last child of an element is null.
The previousSibling of the first child is null.
A document.getElementById reference is null if the element does not exist in the document.
But in none of these cases is the value undefined; there just is no node there.
Unknown variable: undefined.
Known variable yet no value: null.
You receive an object from a server, server_object.
You reference server_object.errj. It tells you it’s undefined. That means it doesn’t know what that is.
Now you reference server_object.err. It tells you it’s null. That means you’re referencing a correct variable but it’s empty; therefore no error.
The problem is when you declare a variable name without a value (var hello) js declares that as undefined: this variable doesn’t exist; whereas programmers mostly mean: “I’ve not given it a value yet”, the definition of null.
So the default behavior of a programmer—declaring a variable without a value as nothing—is at odds with js—declaring it as not existing. And besides, !undefined and !null are both true so most programmers treat them as equivalent.
You could of course ensure you always do var hello = null but most won’t litter their code as such to ensure type sanity in a deliberately loosely-typed language, when they and the ! operator treat both undefined and null as equivalent.
In JavaScript, the value null represents the intentional absence of any object value. null expresses a lack of identification, indicating that a variable points to no object.
The global undefined property represents the primitive value undefined.
undefined is a primitive value automatically assigned to variables.
undefined is meant to say that the reference is not existing.
I completely disagree that usage null or undefined is unnecessary.
undefined is thing which keeping alive whole prototype chaining process.
So compiler only with null can't check if this property just equal to null, or its not defined in endpoint prototype. In other dynamic typed languages(f.e. Python) it throws exception if you want access to not defined property, but for prototype-based languages compiler should also check parent prototypes and here are the place when undefined need most.
Whole meaning of using null is just bind variable or property with object which is singleton and have meaning of emptiness,and also null usage have performance purposes. This 2 code have difference execution time.
var p1 = function(){this.value = 1};
var big_array = new Array(100000000).fill(1).map((x, index)=>{
p = new p1();
if(index > 50000000){
p.x = "some_string";
}
return p;
});
big_array.reduce((sum, p)=> sum + p.value, 0)
var p2 = function(){this.value = 1, p.x = null};
var big_array = new Array(100000000).fill(1).map((x, index)=>{
p = new p2();
if(index > 50000000){
p.x = "some_string";
}
return p;
});
big_array.reduce((sum, p)=> sum + p.value, 0)
I'm working through this exact question right now, and looking at the following philosophy:
Any function that is intended to return a result should return null if it fails to find a result
Any function that is NOT intended to return a result implicitly returns undefined.
For me, this question is significant because anyone calling a function that returns a result should have no question as to whether to test for undefined vs null.
This answer does not attempt to address:
Property values of null vs undefined
Variables within your functions being null vs undefined
In my opinion, variables are your own business and not a part of your API, and properties in any OO system are defined and therefore should be defined with value different from what they would be if not defined (null for defined, undefined is what you get when accessing something that is not in your object).
Here's a reason: var undefined = 1 is legal javascript, but var null = 1 is a syntax error. The difference is that null is a language keyword, while undefined is, for some reason, not.
If your code relies on comparisons to undefined as if it's a keyword (if (foo == undefined) -- a very easy mistake to make) that only works because nobody has defined a variable with that name. All that code is vulnerable to someone accidentally or maliciously defining a global variable with that name. Of course, we all know that accidentally defining a global variable is totally impossible in javascript...
Just wanna add that with usage of certain javascript libraries, null and undefined can have unintended consequences.
For example, lodash's get function, which accepts a default value as a 3rd argument:
const user = {
address: {
block: null,
unit: undefined,
}
}
console.log(_.get(user, 'address.block', 'Default Value')) // prints null
console.log(_.get(user, 'address.unit', 'Default Value')) // prints 'Default Value'
console.log(_.get(user, 'address.postalCode', 'Default Value')) // prints 'Default Value'
Another example: If you use defaultProps in React, if a property is passed null, default props are not used because null is interpreted as a defined value.
e.g.
class MyComponent extends React.Component {
static defaultProps = {
callback: () => {console.log('COMPONENT MOUNTED')},
}
componentDidMount() {
this.props.callback();
}
}
//in some other component
<MyComponent /> // Console WILL print "COMPONENT MOUNTED"
<MyComponent callback={null}/> // Console will NOT print "COMPONENT MOUNTED"
<MyComponent callback={undefined}/> // Console WILL print "COMPONENT MOUNTED"
There are already some good answers here but not the one that I was looking for. null and undefined both "technically" do the same thing in terms of both being falsy, but when I read through code and I see a "null" then I'm expecting that it's a user defined null, something was explicitly set to contain no value, if I read through code and see "undefined" then I assume that it's code that was never initialized or assigned by anything. In this way code can communicate to you whether something was caused by uninitialized stuff or null values. Because of that you really shouldn't assign "undefined" manually to something otherwise it messes with the way you (or another developer) can read code. If another developer sees "undefined" they're not going to intuitively assume it's you who made it undefined, they're going to assume it's not been initialized when in fact it was. For me this is the biggest deal, when I read code I want to see what it's telling me, I don't want to guess and figure out if stuff has "actually" been initialized.
Not even to mention that using them in typescript means two different things. Using:
interface Example {
name?: string
}
Means that name can be undefined or a string, but it can't be null. If you want it null you have to explicitly use:
interface Example {
name: string | null
}
And even then you'll be forced to initialize it at least with "null".
That's of course only true if you're using "strictNullChecks": true in tsconfig.json.
Based on a recent breakage we ran into, the example below shows why I prefer to use undefined over null, unless there is a specific reason to do otherwise:
function myfunc (myArg) {
if (typeof myArg === 'string') {
console.log('a', myArg);
} else if (typeof abc === 'object') {
console.log('b', myArg);
if (myArg.id) {
console.log('myArg has an id');
} else {
console.log('myArg has an id');
}
} else {
console.log('no value');
}
}
The following values will play nicely:
'abc'
{}
undefined
{ id: 'xyz' }
On the other hand the assumption of null and undefined being equivalent here breaks the code. The reason being is that null is of type of object, where as undefined is of type undefined. So here the code breaks because you can't test for a member on null.
I have seen a large number of cases with code of similar appearance, where null is just asking for problems:
if (typeof myvar === 'string') {
console.log(myvar);
} else if (typeof myvar === 'object') {
console.log(myvar.id);
}
The fix here would be to explicitly test for null:
if (typeof myvar === 'string') {
console.log(myvar);
} else if (myvar !== null && typeof myvar === 'object') {
console.log(myvar.id);
}
My attitude is to code for the weaknesses of a language and the typical behaviours of programmers of that language, hence the philosophy here of going with 'undefined' bey default.
To write simple code you need to keep complexity and variation down. When a variable or a property on an object does not have a value it is undefined , and for a value to be null you need to assign it a null value.
Undeclared vs Null
null is both an Object "type" and one of the 7 unique primitive value types called null
undefined is both a global scope property and type called undefined and one of the 7 unique primitive value types called undefined (window.undefined) .
It is the primitive types we use as values we are interested in.
In the case of null, as a value type it means an empty value has been assigned to a variable, but the variable type (Number, String, etc) is still defined. It just has no value. That is what null means. It means a variable has an empty value but it is still a value. It also reinitializes the variable with some kind of value, but is not undefined as a type.
undefined is a special case. When you declare a variable (or use a missing value not yet declared) it is of type undefined, as the browser does not know what type of data has been assigned to it yet. If the variable is declared but not assigned a value is is assigned the primitive calue undefined by default prior to assigning a value, and implies the variable does not exist or exists but has no value assigned.
Like null, undefined is also a primitive value type. But unlike null it means the variable does not exist, where null means the value does not exist. That is why its always better to check if the variable exists and has been assigned a variable using undefined before checking if the value is null or empty. undefined implies no variable or object exists in the compilation at all. The variable has either not been declared or declared with a missing value so not initialized. So checking for undefined is a very good way to avoid many types of errors in JavaScript and supersedes null.
That is why I would not rely on "truthy" checks for true/false with null and undefined, even though they will both return a false response, as undefined implies an additional step for missing feature, object, or variable, not just a true/false check. It implies something more. If you have a missing undeclared variable, truthy statements will trigger an ERROR!
Let's look at undefined first:
//var check1;// variable doesnt even exist so not assigned to "undefined"
var check2;// variable declared but not initialized so assigned "undefined"
var check3 = 'hello world';// variable has a value so not undefined
console.log('What is undefined?');
//console.log(check1 === undefined);// ERROR! check1 does not exist yet so not assigned undefined!
console.log(check2 === undefined);// True
console.log(check3 === undefined);// False
console.log(typeof check1 === 'undefined');// True - stops the ERROR!
console.log(typeof check2 === 'undefined');// True
console.log(typeof check3 === 'undefined');// False
As you can see undeclared variables, or declared but not initialized, both are assigned a type of undefined. Notice declared variables that are not initialized are assigned a value of undefined, the primitive value type but variables that do not exist are undefined types.
null has nothing to do with missing variables or variables not yet assigned values, as null is still a value. So anything with a null is already declared and initialized. Also notice a variable assigned a null value is actually an object type unlike undefined types. For example...
var check4 = null;
var check5 = 'hello world';
console.log('What is null?');
console.log(check4 === undefined);// False
console.log(check5 === undefined);// False
console.log(typeof check4 === 'undefined');// False
console.log(typeof check5 === 'undefined');// False
console.log(typeof check4);// return 'object'
console.log(typeof check5);// return 'string'
As you can see each act differently and yet both are primitive values you can assign any variable. Just understand they represent different states of variables and objects.
When I run "var variable = true;" in chrome console I get "undefined" returned:
> var variable = true;
undefined
But when I run without "var" it returns true:
> variable = true;
true
Why is it returning "undefined" with "var"?
It's confusing cause I expected it would return true.
The first is a statement, while the second is an expression. While not quite the same, it is similar to C's rules:
// A statement that has no value.
int x = 5;
// An expression...
x = 10;
// ...that can be passed around.
printf("%d\n", x = 15);
var x = y; is a statement which returns no value. In the WebKit JS console, a statement that returns no value will show undefined as the result, e.g.
> if(1){}
undefined
> ;
undefined
> if(1){4} // this statement returns values!
4
The assignment is an expression which returns the value of the LHS. That means, this expression statement has a return value, and this will be shown.
An assignation returns the assignation's value, but with var this return is "consumed" (?)
Statements always return undefined.
var color = "red";
undefined
Expressions always return a value.
color = "orange";
"orange"
I'd like to point out, that the answer provided by kennytm should be the accepted answer, at least for pedagogical purposes. The accepted answer doesn't answer why this is the case or provide deeper understanding.
Like the null value in JavaScript, undefined indicates absence of value, but in a much deeper way. The following should be taken as complimentary to the above-mentioned answers:
undefined is the value of variables that haven't been initialized and the
value you get when you query the value of an object property or
array element that doesn't exist. This value is also returned by
functions that have no return value, and the value of function
parameters for which no argument is supplied. undefined is a predefined
global variable (not a language keyword like null) that is initialized
to the undefined value.
You might consider undefined to represent a system-level, unexpected,
or error-like absence of value and null to represent program-level,
normal, or expected absence of value.
-- Flanagan, David. JavaScript: The Definitive Guide: Activate Your Web
Pages (Definitive Guides) . O'Reilly Media. Kindle Edition.
Also, makes sure to check out both the accepted and the second most voted answer for further reference:
Chrome/Firefox console.log always appends a line saying undefined