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JavaScript Exponentiation operator **

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JavaScript exponentiation operator (**) will return the first operand’s power to the second operand. ECMAScript 2016 provided an alternative way to get a base to the exponent power by using the exponentiation operator ( **) with the following syntax:

x**n

The operator ** raises the x to the power of an exponent n.

Note: a ** b is equivalent to aba^{b}ab, which is equivalent to Math.pow(a, b)

JavaScript Exponentiation operator

Simple example code.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
  <script>
    let res1 = 2 ** 20;
   console.log(res1); 

   var res2 = 2 ** 3;
   console.log(res2); 
 </script>
</body>
</html>

Output:

JavaScript Exponentiation operator

This operator ** also accepts the numbers of the bigint

let result = 2n ** 3n;
console.log(result); // 8n

More Examples

console.log(3 ** 4); // 81

console.log(10 ** -2); // 0.01

console.log(2 ** 3 ** 2); // 512

console.log((2 ** 3) ** 2); // 64

Invalid Operations

You cannot put a unary operator (+/-/~/!/delete/void/typeof) immediately before the base number.

+a ** b;
-a ** b;
~a ** b;
!a ** b;
delete a ** b;
void a ** b;
typeof a ** b;

All the above operations are invalid and result in

Uncaught SyntaxError: Unary operator used immediately before exponentiation expression. Parenthesis must be used to disambiguate operator precedence

Do comment if you have any doubts or suggestions on this Js operator topic.

Note: The All JS Examples codes are tested on the Firefox browser and the Chrome browser.

OS: Windows 10

Code: HTML 5 Version

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