Chapter 1: New Keywords: let and const
by Aurelio de Rosa
In this tutorial, I'll introduce let and const, two new keywords added to JavaScript with the arrival of ES6. They enhance JavaScript by providing a way to define block-scope variables and constants.
let
Up to ES5, JavaScript had only two types of scope, function scope and global scope. This caused a lot of frustration and unexpected behaviors for developers coming from other languages such as C, C++ or Java. JavaScript lacked block scope, meaning that a variable is only accessible within the block in which it’s defined. A block is everything inside an opening and closing curly bracket. Let's take a look at the following example:
function foo() { var par = 1; if (par >= 0) { var bar = ...Get Practical ES6 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
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