In JavaScript, every value has an assigned type. To determine the type of a variable, we can use the typeof
operator, which returns a string representing the variable’s type.
Here are a few examples of using the typeof
operator:
typeof 1; //'number'
typeof '1'; //'string'
typeof {name: 'Flavio'}; //'object'
typeof [1, 2, 3]; //'object'
typeof true; //'boolean'
typeof undefined; //'undefined'
typeof (() => {}); //'function'
typeof Symbol(); //'symbol'
It’s interesting to note that JavaScript doesn’t have a specific “function” type. However, when we pass a function to the typeof
operator, it returns 'function'
. This quirk is designed to simplify our coding.
If a variable is declared but not initialized, its value will be undefined
until a value is assigned to it:
let a; //typeof a === 'undefined'
The typeof
operator also works on object properties. For example, if we have a car
object with only one property:
const car = {
model: 'Fiesta'
}
We can check if the color
property is defined on the car
object using typeof
:
if (typeof car.color === 'undefined') {
// color is undefined
}