JavaScript beyond ES6#1 - ES2016: includes() & exponential operator

Everything new in ES2016

ES2016 introduced only two new features :

• Array.prototype.includes()
• the exponential operator

 

Array.prototype.includes()

The includes() method will return true if our array includes a certain element, or false if it doesn’t.

let array = [1,2,4,5];

array.includes(2);
// true
array.includes(3);
// false

 

Combine includes() with fromIndex

We can provide .includes() with an index where to begin searching for an element. Default is 0, but we can also pass a negative value.

The first value we pass is the element to search and the second one is the index:

let array = [1,3,5,7,9,11];

array.includes(3,1);
// true
array.includes(5,4);
//false
array.includes(1,-1);
// false
array.includes(11,-3);
// true

array.includes(5,4); returned false because, despite the array actually contains the number 5, it is at the index 2 but we started looking at position 4. That’s why we couldn’t find it and it returned false.

array.includes(1,-1); returned false because we started looking at the index -1 (which is the last element of the array) and then continued from that point onwards.

array.includes(11,-3); returned true because we went back to the index -3 and moved up, finding the value 11 on our path.

 

The exponential operator

Prior to ES2016 we would have done this:

Math.pow(2,2);
// 4
Math.pow(2,3);
// 8

Now with the new exponential operator we can do this:

2**2;
// 4
2**3;
// 8

It will get pretty useful when combining multiple operations like in this example:

2**2**2;
// 16
Math.pow(Math.pow(2,2),2);
// 16

Using Math.pow() you need to continuously concatenate them and it can get pretty long and messy. The exponential operator provides a faster and cleaner way of doing the same thing.

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This was the first part of my Beyond ES6 course.

You can also read this articles on medium, on my profile.

Thank you for reading.