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

Incredible Demos

  • By
    WebSocket and Socket.IO

    My favorite web technology is quickly becoming the WebSocket API. WebSocket provides a welcomed alternative to the AJAX technologies we've been making use of over the past few years. This new API provides a method to push messages from client to server efficiently...

  • By
    jQuery Comment Preview

    I released a MooTools comment preview script yesterday and got numerous requests for a jQuery version. Ask and you shall receive! I'll use the exact same CSS and HTML as yesterday. The XHTML The CSS The jQuery JavaScript On the keypress and blur events, we validate and...

Discussion

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