Baseline Widely available
The equality (==
) operator checks whether its two operands are equal, returning a Boolean result. Unlike the strict equality operator, it attempts to convert and compare operands that are of different types.
console.log(1 == 1);
// Expected output: true
console.log("hello" == "hello");
// Expected output: true
console.log("1" == 1);
// Expected output: true
console.log(0 == false);
// Expected output: true
Syntax Description
The equality operators (==
and !=
) provide the IsLooselyEqual semantic. This can be roughly summarized as follows:
true
only if both operands reference the same object.true
only if both operands have the same characters in the same order.true
only if both operands have the same value. +0
and -0
are treated as the same value. If either operand is NaN
, return false
; so, NaN
is never equal to NaN
.true
only if operands are both true
or both false
.true
only if both operands have the same value.true
only if both operands reference the same symbol.null
or undefined
, the other must also be null
or undefined
to return true
. Otherwise return false
.false
.true
is converted to 1, and false
is converted to 0. Then compare the two operands loosely again.NaN
, which will guarantee the equality to be false
.NaN
, return false
.BigInt()
constructor. If conversion fails, return false
.Loose equality is symmetric: A == B
always has identical semantics to B == A
for any values of A
and B
(except for the order of applied conversions).
The most notable difference between this operator and the strict equality (===
) operator is that the strict equality operator does not attempt type conversion. Instead, the strict equality operator always considers operands of different types to be different. The strict equality operator essentially carries out only step 1, and then returns false
for all other cases.
There's a "willful violation" of the above algorithm: if one of the operands is document.all
, it is treated as if it's undefined
. This means that document.all == null
is true
, but document.all === undefined && document.all === null
is false
.
1 == 1; // true
"hello" == "hello"; // true
Comparison with type conversion
"1" == 1; // true
1 == "1"; // true
0 == false; // true
0 == null; // false
0 == undefined; // false
0 == !!null; // true, look at Logical NOT operator
0 == !!undefined; // true, look at Logical NOT operator
null == undefined; // true
const number1 = new Number(3);
const number2 = new Number(3);
number1 == 3; // true
number1 == number2; // false
Comparison of objects
const object1 = {
key: "value",
};
const object2 = {
key: "value",
};
console.log(object1 == object2); // false
console.log(object1 == object1); // true
Comparing strings and String objects
Note that strings constructed using new String()
are objects. If you compare one of these with a string literal, the String
object will be converted to a string literal and the contents will be compared. However, if both operands are String
objects, then they are compared as objects and must reference the same object for comparison to succeed:
const string1 = "hello";
const string2 = String("hello");
const string3 = new String("hello");
const string4 = new String("hello");
console.log(string1 == string2); // true
console.log(string1 == string3); // true
console.log(string2 == string3); // true
console.log(string3 == string4); // false
console.log(string4 == string4); // true
Comparing Dates and strings
const d = new Date("1995-12-17T03:24:00");
const s = d.toString(); // for example: "Sun Dec 17 1995 03:24:00 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)"
console.log(d == s); // true
Comparing arrays and strings
const a = [1, 2, 3];
const b = "1,2,3";
a == b; // true, `a` converts to string
const c = [true, 0.5, "hey"];
const d = c.toString(); // "true,0.5,hey"
c == d; // true
Specifications Browser compatibility See also
RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo
HTML:
3.2
| Encoding:
UTF-8
| Version:
0.7.4