Type Casting & Coercion

Type Casting & Coercion

  • 22.1 Perform type coercion at the beginning of the statement.

  • 22.2 Strings:

    // => this.reviewScore = 9;
    
    // bad
    const totalScore = this.reviewScore + ''; // invokes this.reviewScore.valueOf()
    
    // bad
    const totalScore = this.reviewScore.toString(); // isn’t guaranteed to return a string
    
    // good
    const totalScore = String(this.reviewScore);
    
  • 22.3 Numbers: Use Number for type casting and parseInt always with a radix for parsing strings. eslint: radix

    const inputValue = '4';
    
    // bad
    const val = new Number(inputValue);
    
    // bad
    const val = +inputValue;
    
    // bad
    const val = inputValue >> 0;
    
    // bad
    const val = parseInt(inputValue);
    
    // good
    const val = Number(inputValue);
    
    // good
    const val = parseInt(inputValue, 10);
    
  • 22.4 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.

    // good
    /**
     * parseInt was the reason my code was slow.
     * Bitshifting the String to coerce it to a
     * Number made it a lot faster.
     */
    const val = inputValue >> 0;
  • 22.5 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
    
  • 22.6 Booleans:

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

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