Type Casting & Coercion

Type Casting & Coercion

  • Perform type coercion at the beginning of the statement.
  • Strings:

    //  => this.reviewScore = 9;
    
    // bad
    var totalScore = this.reviewScore + '';
    
    // good
    var totalScore = '' + this.reviewScore;
    
    // bad
    var totalScore = '' + this.reviewScore + ' total score';
    
    // good
    var totalScore = this.reviewScore + ' total score';
    
  • Use parseInt for Numbers and always with a radix for type casting.

    var inputValue = '4';
    
    // bad
    var val = new Number(inputValue);
    
    // bad
    var val = +inputValue;
    
    // bad
    var val = inputValue >> 0;
    
    // bad
    var val = parseInt(inputValue);
    
    // good
    var val = Number(inputValue);
    
    // good
    var val = parseInt(inputValue, 10);
    
  • If for whatever reason you are doing something wild and parseInt is your bottleneck and need to use Bitshift for performance reasons, leave a comment explaining why and what you’re doing.

    ```javascript // good /**

    • parseInt was the reason my code was slow.
    • Bitshifting the String to coerce it to a
    • Number made it a lot faster. */ var val = inputValue >> 0; ```
  • Note: Be careful when using bitshift operations. Numbers are represented as 64-bit values, but Bitshift operations always return a 32-bit integer (source). Bitshift can lead to unexpected behavior for integer values larger than 32 bits. Discussion. Largest signed 32-bit Int is 2,147,483,647:

    2147483647 >> 0 //=> 2147483647
    2147483648 >> 0 //=> -2147483648
    2147483649 >> 0 //=> -2147483647
    
  • Booleans:

    var age = 0;
    
    // bad
    var hasAge = new Boolean(age);
    
    // good
    var hasAge = Boolean(age);
    
    // good
    var hasAge = !!age;
    

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