Nullish Coalescing
Published Jan 8, 2025
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In JavaScript, the nullish coalescing (??
) operator is a logical operator that evaluates the left-hand operand and returns it if it is not nullish (i.e., not null
or undefined
). Otherwise, it returns the right-hand operand.
Syntax
value1 ?? value2
value1
: The first operand to check if it is nullish (null
orundefined
).value2
: The second operand that acts as the default value, returned only ifvalue1
is nullish.
Example
The following example demonstrates the use of the nullish coalescing operator to return 18
as a default or fallback value when the variable age
is null
or undefined
:
const age = undefined;const defaultAge = 18;console.log(age ?? defaultAge);
The above code produces the following output:
18
Codebyte Example
The following codebyte example uses the nullish coalescing operator (??
) to return "Guest"
as a fallback value when name
is null
:
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