World of Any and Unknown in Typescript

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Apart from the primitive types i.e. string, number, boolean ,null and undefined, there are two special types in TypeScript :

Any
Unknown

Most of us are familiar with any type because that is the first thing we commonly use when we could not find a type or we feel lazy to write the type for a big and complex object.

For those who are seeing this first time. Here is a short brief on any:

Any

If you want to avoid type checking and you do not want typescript to complain about it you can simply use any type. As the name suggests, any accepts all the types. It is also known as top type.

The top type is sometimes called also universal type, or universal supertype as all other types in the type system of interest are subtypes of it.

Syntax

Implications of assigning any type

You can assign anything to any typed variable.

You can also assign any typed variable to other type of variables.

You can assess the properties which do not exist on any typed variable.

You can call any typed variable as function, even if it is not a function.

Word of wisdom

Use any type as last resort because it takes away all the power that is provided by typescript

Enter the world of unknown

unknown type is first introduced in Typescript 3.0. It is also another top type in Typescript. As per official docs:

unknown is the type-safe counterpart of any

It is similar to any because it can accept all types of values. It enforces a bit more restriction than any because you cannot perform any action on unknown typed variable without type assertion or narrowing it to more specific type.

Syntax

Implications of assigning unknown type

You can assign anything to unknown typed variable.

unknown typed variable is only assignable to unknown or any type.

You can not perform any operations without narrowing or type assertion.

Only equality operators are allowed with unknown

You cannot create rest from unknown type

Union with unknown and other types produces unknown type with an exception of union with any which produces any type

When taking Intersection with unknown, it is absorbed by other types.

Perform operation on unknown type

Before performing any operation on unknown type we need to narrow it down using typeof or instanceof operator. We can also use type assertions with as or we can provide a custom function which acts as type guard

Using typeof