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JavaScript

Posted by Keith Corona
Keith Corona
9,553 Points

Necessity of parenthesis in the 'if' statement

In the following code, I eliminated ( ) after "answer" in the 'if' statement

var answer = prompt('What is the best programming language?');

if( answer === 'JavaScript') {
  alert('You are correct!');
}

compare with () appearing after the variable 'answer' in the if statement...

var answer = prompt('What is the best programming language?');

if( answer() === 'JavaScript') {
  alert('You are correct!');
}

In the challenge, the first code passed while the second code did not. In the exercises prior to this challenge, I had () appearing after the variable name in the if statement - my question: what is the purpose of these parenthesis? Are the necessary?

1 Answer

Keli'i Martin
Keli'i Martin
8,227 Points

Having a set of parentheses after a name would indicate that you are working with a function. In this case, answer is declared as a variable, so no parentheses are necessary. If instead of a variable, you had a function that returned a string, then you would have parentheses.

For example:

function answer() {
    return prompt('What is the best programming language?');
}

In that case, you would have parentheses after answer. Hope that makes sense.