JS: Truthy and Falsy Expressions

Learning Goals

• Determine which expressions are truthy and which are falsy to the JS interpreter
• Write cleaner code by applying your knowledge of truthy and falsy values

Vocabulary

• Expression A statement that produces a value
• Conditional An expression that evaluates to true or false, or a control flow statement that executes code
• Truthy values In JavaScript, a truthy value is a value that is considered true when encountered in a Boolean context.
• Falsy values In JavaScript, a falsy value is a value that is considered false when encountered in a Boolean context.

Cleaning Up Conditionals

Learning about truthy and falsy values can help you write cleaner code. Let’s look at this code block:

var isMorning = true;
var isDayTime = false;
var isEvening = false;

function greetFriend() {
  if (isMorning === true && isDayTime === false && isEvening === false) {
    return `Good morning, friend!`;
  } else if (isMorning === false && isDayTime === true && isEvening === false) {
    return `Good afternoon, friend!`;
  } else if (isMorning === false && isDayTime === false && isEvening === true) {
    return `Good night, friend!`;
  } else {
    return `Hi friend!`;
  }
}

greetFriend();

That code contains a lot of unnecessary code! It’s okay if you don’t see what is unnecessary just yet - that’s what this lesson is for! We’ll come back to this block of code at the end of the lesson and clean it up.

Truthy and Falsy Values

The following values are considered falsy:

• false
• 0
• -0
• ""
• null
• undefined
• NaN

All other values are considered truthy!

This means that the following code is unnecessary:

• === undefined
• === null
• === true
• === false
• === 0

If you find yourself writing any of the code listed above, find a better way to write it. For example, instead of this:

if (pets.length > 0) {
  return 'You have at least one pet!';
}

Write this:

if (pets.length) {
  return 'You have at least one pet!';
}

And instead of this:

if (character === undefined) {
  return 'No character found.';
}

Write this:

if (!character) {
  return 'No character found.';
}