const
const
is a very welcomed addition offered by ES6 / TypeScript. It allows you to be immutable with variables. This is good from a documentation as well as a runtime perspective. To use const just replace var
with const
:
The syntax is much better (IMHO) than other languages that force the user to type something like
let constant foo
i.e. a variable + behavior specifier.
const
is a good practice for both readability and maintainability and avoids using magic literals e.g.
const declarations must be initialized
The following is a compiler error:
Left hand side of assignment cannot be a constant
Constants are immutable after creation, so if you try to assign them to a new value it is a compiler error:
Block Scoped
A const
is block scoped like we saw with let
:
Deep immutability
A const
works with object literals as well, as far as protecting the variable reference is concerned:
However, it still allows sub properties of objects to be mutated, as shown below:
For this reason I recommend using const
with primitives or immutable data structures.
Last updated