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hariramjp777 profile image
Hari Ram •

In programming, ++ and -- are Increment and Decrement Operators.

Say,

let a = 10;
let b = a++;
console.log(b); // 10
console.log(a); // 11
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Here, In the above code block, we're doing a++ means Post-Increment which states Set and then Increment. So, First b is set to 10 which is a 's original value and then a will be incremented by 1.

The opposite is Pre-Increment which states Increment and then Set.

let a =10;
let b = ++a;
console.log(b); // 11
console.log(a) // 11
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Hope this code block makes sense.

When you use in if-block,

say,

let num = 0;
if (num++) {  // num is zero
  console.log("Hello");
}
console.log(num); // num is 1
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"Hello" will not be printed since num is zero which is considered as false value.

If you want "Hello", you can use Pre-Increment.

let num = 0;
if (++num) {  // num is one here
  console.log("Hello");
}
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"Hello" will be printed in the console.

Falsey values in js are,

0, false, "", null, undefined, NaN

Hope it helps 👍

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rsa profile image
Ranieri Althoff •

Hold up! Not in programming, but in Javascript and some other languages. Several languages use ++ to concatenate.

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hariramjp777 profile image
Hari Ram •

Thanks. 👍

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ironcladdev profile image
Conner Ow •

Thanks a lot! That was really helpful!

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peerreynders profile image
peerreynders • • Edited

I think the issue is that postfix increment is often taught and therefore used as a statement rather than an expression - therefore the fact that it returns a value and the question of which value it returns rarely comes up.

In fact in 1996 Scott Meyers in More Effective C++ noted:

Item 6: Distinguish between postfix and prefix forms of increment and decrement operators
...
If you’re the kind who worries about efficiency, you probably broke into a sweat when you first saw the postfix increment function. That function has to create a temporary object for its return value (see Item 19)

and in 2008 in JavaScript: The Good Parts Douglas Crockford observes:

In my own practice, I observed that when I used ++ and --, my code tended to be too tight, too tricky, too cryptic. So, as a matter of discipline, I don’t use them any more. I think that as a result, my coding style has become cleaner.

So it's kind of surprising that the canonical for loop is given as

let str = '';

for (let i = 0; i < 9; i++) {
  str = str + i;
}

console.log(str); // expected output: "012345678"
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Given that the old value returned isn't used it would make more sense to use the prefix increment:

let str = '';

for (let i = 0; i < 9; ++i) {
  str = str + i;
}

console.log(str); // expected output: "012345678"
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though I hope that JavaScript engines optimize the unused return value out in any case.

Douglas Crockford's JSLint bans increment operators outright:

Expected '+= 1' and instead saw '++'.
  for (i = 0; i < 9; i++) {
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favouring instead:

let str = '';

for (let i = 0; i < 9; i += 1) {
  str = str + i;
}

console.log(str); // expected output: "012345678"
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... so there is an ESLint and TSLint rule for that.