JavaScript: The Good Parts

typeof

The typeof operator returns a string that identifies the type of its operand. So:

typeof 98.6

produces 'number'. Unfortunately:

typeof null

returns 'object' instead of 'null'. Oops. A better test for null is simply:

my_value === null

A bigger problem is testing a value for objectness. typeof cannot distinguish between null and objects, but you can because null is falsy and all objects are truthy:

if (my_value && typeof my_value === 'object') {
    // my_value is an object or an array!
}

Also see the later sections "NaN" and "Phony Arrays."

Implementations disagree on the type of regular expression objects. Some implementations report that:

typeof /a/

is 'object', and others say that it is 'function'. It might have been more useful to report 'regexp', but the standard does not allow that.