7 JavaScript Shorthand Techniques that will Save your Time

In this article, we will discuss 7 cool shorthand tricks in JavaScript that will save the developer time.

1. Arrow Function: JavaScript Arrow functions were introduced in ES6. The main advantage of this function is, it has shorter syntax.

Javascript

// Longhand
function add(a, b) {
   return a + b;
}


// Shorthand
const add = (a, b) => a + b;

2. Multi-line string: For multi line string we normally use + operator with a new line escape sequence (\n). We can do it in an easier way by using backticks (`).

Javascript

// Longhand
console.log('JavaScript is a lightweight, interpreted, '
    + 'object-oriented language\nwith first-class '
    + 'functions, and is best known as the scripting '
    + 'language for Web \npages, but it is used in many'
    + 'non-browser environments as well.\n');


// Shorthand
console.log(`JavaScript is a lightweight, interpreted,
object-oriented language with first-class functions,
and is best known as the scripting language for Web
pages, but it is used in many non-browser environments
as well.`);

3. For loop: To loop through an array, we normally use the traditional for loop. We can make use of the for…of loop to iterate through arrays. To access the index of each value we can use for…in loop.

Javascript

let myArr = [50, 60, 70, 80];

// Longhand
for (let i = 0; i < myArr.length; i++) {
  console.log(myArr[i]);
}


// Shorthand
// 1. for of loop
for (const val of myArr) {
  console.log(val);
}

// 2. for in loop
for (const index in myArr) {
  console.log(`index: ${index} and value: ${myArr[index]}`);
}

4. String into a Number: There are built in methods like parseInt and parseFloat available to convert a string into number. It can also be done by simply providing an unary operator (+) in front of string value.

Javascript

// Longhand
let a = parseInt('764');
let b = parseFloat('29.3');


// Shorthand
let a = +'764';
let b = +'29.3';

5. Swap two variables

For swapping two variables, we often use a third variable. But it can be done easily with array de-structuring assignment.

Javascript

//Longhand
let x = 'Hello', y = 'World';
const temp = x;
x = y;
y = temp;


//Shorthand
[x, y] = [y, x];

6.  Merging of arrays: To merge two arrays, following can be used:

Javascript

// Longhand
let a1 = [2, 3];
let a2 = a1.concat([6, 8]);

// Output: [2, 3, 6, 8]


// Shorthand
let a2 = [...a1, 6, 8];

// Output: [2, 3, 6, 8]

7. Multiple condition checking: For multiple value matching, we can put all values in array and use indexOf() or includes() method.

Javascript

// Longhand
if (value === 1 || value === 'hello' || value === 2 || value === 'world') {
    ...
}

// Shorthand 1
if ([1, 'hello', 2, 'world'].indexOf(value) >= 0) {
    ...
}

// Shorthand 2
if ([1, 'hello', 2, 'world'].includes(value)) {
    ...
}