Last night, I found an interesting JavaScript question, and I bet you won't be able to answer this without cheating.
What do you think is the output of this code snippet?
Let me know in the comments!
("b" + "a" + + "a" + "a").toLowerCase()
The Options are given as following
- baaa
- ba01100001a
- baa
- ba1a
The question does look simple, but the answer will definitely blow your mind.
Did you get any of these? The interesting thing is - all the options provided above are wrong!
Answer in 5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
and...
The answer is "banana"
JAVASCRIPT IS JUST CRAZY 🤐🔥
Before you get freaked out and ask me "Are you mad?", let me tell you this is the reason why "JavaScript is Extraordinarily Weird". You see its beauty lies within its complexity!
Working
Let's break down the code step by step to understand WHY!:
"b" + "a"concatenates the strings resulting in"ba".+ + "a"is trying to convert the string"a"to a number and then concatenating it with the above string"ba". Since"a"is not a valid numeric representation, the result of this conversion isNaN("Not-a-Number")."ba" + NaNconcatenates the string"ba"with the valueNaN, resulting in the string"baNaN"."baNaN" + "a"concatenates the string"baNaN"with the string"a", resulting in the string"baNaNa"..toLowerCase()is then called on the string"baNaNa". This method converts all characters in the string to lowercase, which further results in the string"banana".
So, the final output of the code is "banana".
Tell me how long it took you to answer this simple question in the comments!
Top comments (2)
Step 2 in your working is kind of incorrect, it is the unary plus on it's own that is forcing the attempted coercion to a number - and hence the
NaN. The first (normal, binary) plus has no bearing here, and is simply doing string concatenation as one would expect.It's only 'weird' if your knowledge of JS is incomplete.
Actually, I was not wrong, but incomplete.
Thanks for letting me know! I edited the step and made the point correct.