Explain exponentiation operator in JavaScript?

Javascript Web Development Front End Technology

The exponentiation operator (**) works on operands. First operand will behave as power to the second operand. It is quite similar to math.pow. Apart from these, this operator also accepts BigInts as operands.

This following example below will brief you

Let ans = 3 ** 3;
document.write(ans); // 27

As mentioned in the above paragraph, This operator also accepts the numbers for BigInt. Consider this example below −

Let ans = 3n ** 3n;
Document.write(ans); //27

Example 1

(a ** b)

This following example represent, usage of exponentiation operator (**). In this below scenario, we’ve considered two operands "a" and "b" and performed the operation.


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
   <title>Exponentiation Assignment (**)</title>
   <p id="demo"></p>
   <script>
      let a = 6;
      let b = a ** 2; // 6 is base operand and 2 is power operand.
      document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = b; //36
      let output = 3 ** 4; //3 is base operand and 4 is power operand.
      document.write(output, "<br>"); // 81
   </script>
</body>
</html>

Example 2

Infix notation (**=)

The below example says that you can also use the exponentiation operator (**) in the infix notation. Let’s consider the below scenario


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
   <title>Exponentiation Assignment in the infix notation (**=)</title>
   <script>
      let a = 5;
      a **= 2; // 2 will be the base operand and 4 is power operand.
      document.write(a); // 25
   </script>
</body>
</html>

Example 3

Ambiguous exponentiation expression

It is not possible to write an ambiguous exponentiation expression in JavaScript because if we try to write any unary operator straight away before the base operand, it will lead to Syntax error. Let’s consider the below example

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
   <title>Ambiguous exponentiation expression</title>
   <script>
      let output = -2**5;
      document.write(output,"<br>"); // This will show you syntax error.
      let outcome = (-2)**5;
      document.write(outcome); // -32
   </script>
</body>
</html>

Output

The output of the above script will be −

-32

Note

Syntax error happened in the above example because, we have used the unary operator straight away before exponentiation expression. So, to avoid that syntax error we need to include parenthesis as done in above scenario.

Example 4

Consider this example, which are dealing with three operands.


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
   <title>Three operands</title>
   <script>
      let output_1 = 3**3**2
      document.write(output_1,"<br>"); // 19683
      let output_2 = 3**(3**2);
      document.write(output_2,"<br>"); // 19683
      let output_3 = (3**3)**2;
      document.write(output_3,"<br>"); // 729
   </script>
</body>
</html>

Note

Consider "3**3**2", here we start solving from left to right. 3 will be the base operand and second 3 will be the power operand, after solving these two operands the result value will be base operand and 2 will be power operand.

Let’s take this 3**(3**2), in this case we start solving from right to left, The 3 which is in parenthesis will act as base operand to 2, after solving the result will be power operand to the left over 3.

Coming to this scenario (3**3)**2, we start solving from left to right, The first 3 inside the parenthesis will act as base operand and other 3 will act as power operand. After solving the result value will act as base operand and 2 is power operand.