Type Conversions

Most of the time, operators and functions automatically convert the values given to them to the right type.

For example, alert automatically converts any value to a string to show it. Mathematical operations convert values to numbers.

There are also cases when we need to explicitly convert a value to the expected type.

In this chapter, we won’t cover objects. For now, we’ll just be talking about primitives.

Later, after we learn about objects, in the chapter Object to primitive conversion we’ll see how objects fit in.

String Conversion

String conversion happens when we need the string form of a value.

For example, alert(value) does it to show the value.

We can also call the String(value) function to convert a value to a string:

let value = true;
alert(typeof value); // boolean

value = String(value); // now value is a string "true"
alert(typeof value); // string

String conversion is mostly obvious. A false becomes "false", null becomes "null", etc.

Numeric conversion in mathematical functions and expressions happens automatically.

For example, when division / is applied to non-numbers:

alert( "6" / "2" ); // 3, strings are converted to numbers

We can use the Number(value) function to explicitly convert a value to a number:

let str = "123";
alert(typeof str); // string

let num = Number(str); // becomes a number 123

alert(typeof num); // number

Explicit conversion is usually required when we read a value from a string-based source like a text form but expect a number to be entered.

If the string is not a valid number, the result of such a conversion is NaN. For instance:

let age = Number("an arbitrary string instead of a number");

alert(age); // NaN, conversion failed