Weird use Date object

Question

+ + new Date

Output

1429943200207

I saw this strange statement in our thirdparty plugin. I tried to break the logic but I can't. It returns the current time in ms as same as new Date().getTime().

Is that an alternate way to return in current time ms?

How it works?

What's on the line before it?

kojow7
– kojow7

2015-04-25 06:33:08 +00:00
Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 6:33 — kojow7
– kojow7, Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 6:33
@kojow7 return + + new Date + Math.random();

kannanrbk
– kannanrbk

2015-04-25 06:34:14 +00:00
Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 6:34 — kannanrbk
– kannanrbk, Commented Apr 25, 2015 at 6:34

Barmar · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-25 06:37:34Z

3

When you put unary + before a value, it is converted to a number. So

+ new Date

is equivalent to

Number(new Date)

And converting a Date to a number returns the time in milliseconds, so they're both equivalent to

(new Date).getTime()

I'm not sure why you have two +, though. Maybe the first one is part of a larger expression, like

"The timestamp is " + + new Date

Then the first + is for concatenation.

edited Apr 25, 2015 at 6:37

answered Apr 25, 2015 at 6:35

Barmar

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1 Comment

takteek Over a year ago

For more info: developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/…

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