Javascript Nullish Coalescing Operator

Javascript nullish coalescing operator

Created By: chatGPT

The nullish coalescing operator (??) is a logical operator in JavaScript that allows you to provide a fallback value when dealing with null or undefined. This is particularly useful to ensure that your variables have meaningful values without having to repeatedly check for these falsy values.

const value = someVariable ?? 'default';

In the example above, if someVariable is either null or undefined, value will be set to 'default'. Otherwise, it will take the value of someVariable.

const userInput = null;
const fallback = 'Default Value';

const result = userInput ?? fallback;
console.log(result); // Output: 'Default Value'

It's important to note that the nullish coalescing operator only checks for null and undefined, not for other falsy values like 0, false, NaN, or an empty string (''). This means that if your variable holds a falsy value but is not null or undefined, it will still be returned.

const input = 0;
const defaultValue = 10;

const finalValue = input ?? defaultValue;
console.log(finalValue); // Output: 0