JavaScript Numeric Separators

By  on  

Writing good code is important -- writing code that's easily human readable is a next level skill. It's not often that APIs are introduced whose seemingly only useful function is making code more readable, but let me introduce you to JavaScript numeric separators: an API that lets developers use underscores to make numbers more readable!

Consider the following number in your code:

// No commas for numbers in JavaScript
const oneHundredThousand = 100000;

Large numbers have always been difficult to mentally parse for engineers, so using underscores to make code more readable is a total win:

const oneMillion = 1_000_000; // 1000000
const decimals = 1_000_00.01_02_03 // 100000.010203

The only real rule with numeric separators is that the number cannot start or end with an underscore.

Numeric separators within JavaScript seem like spec creators gifting developers a feature. As an engineer, I'll take all I can get. You never stop learning in the world of JavaScript!

Recent Features

  • By
    Create a CSS Flipping Animation

    CSS animations are a lot of fun; the beauty of them is that through many simple properties, you can create anything from an elegant fade in to a WTF-Pixar-would-be-proud effect. One CSS effect somewhere in between is the CSS flip effect, whereby there's...

  • By
    5 More HTML5 APIs You Didn’t Know Existed

    The HTML5 revolution has provided us some awesome JavaScript and HTML APIs.  Some are APIs we knew we've needed for years, others are cutting edge mobile and desktop helpers.  Regardless of API strength or purpose, anything to help us better do our job is a...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Retrieve Your Gmail Emails Using PHP and IMAP

    Grabbing emails from your Gmail account using PHP is probably easier than you think. Armed with PHP and its IMAP extension, you can retrieve emails from your Gmail account in no time! Just for fun, I'll be using the MooTools Fx.Accordion plugin...

  • By
    Fullscreen API

    As we move toward more true web applications, our JavaScript APIs are doing their best to keep up.  One very simple but useful new JavaScript API is the Fullscreen API.  The Fullscreen API provides a programmatic way to request fullscreen display from the user, and exit...

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!