Shorthand if/else statement Javascript

javascript shorthand
Elliot Bonneville picture Elliot Bonneville · Mar 26, 2012 · Viewed 149.4k times · Source

I'm wondering if there's a shorter way to write this:

var x = 1;
if(y != undefined) x = y;

I initially tried x = y || 1, but that didn't work. What's the correct way to go about this?

Answer

Amber picture Amber · Mar 26, 2012 
var x = y !== undefined ? y : 1;

Note that var x = y || 1; would assign 1 for any case where y is falsy (e.g. false, 0, ""), which may be why it "didn't work" for you. Also, if y is a global variable, if it's truly not defined you may run into an error unless you access it as window.y.

As vol7ron suggests in the comments, you can also use typeof to avoid the need to refer to global vars as window.<name>:

var x = typeof y != "undefined" ? y : 1;

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