I have an annoying problem in JavaScript.
> parseInt(1 / 0, 19)
> 18
Why does the parseInt
function return 18
?
The result of 1/0
is Infinity
.
parseInt
treats its first argument as a string which means first of all Infinity.toString()
is called, producing the string "Infinity"
. So it works the same as if you asked it to convert "Infinity"
in base 19 to decimal.
Here are the digits in base 19 along with their decimal values:
Base 19 Base 10 (decimal)
---------------------------
0 0
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4
5 5
6 6
7 7
8 8
9 9
a 10
b 11
c 12
d 13
e 14
f 15
g 16
h 17
i 18
What happens next is that parseInt
scans the input "Infinity"
to find which part of it can be parsed and stops after accepting the first I
(because n
is not a valid digit in base 19).
Therefore it behaves as if you called parseInt("I", 19)
, which converts to decimal 18 by the table above.