isNaN()

value

The value to be tested.

true if the given value is NaN; otherwise, false.

Unlike all other possible values in JavaScript, it is not possible to use the equality operators (== and ===) to compare a value against NaN to determine whether the value is NaN or not, because both NaN == NaN and NaN === NaN evaluate to false. The isNaN() function provides a convenient equality check against NaN.

NaN values are generated when arithmetic operations result in undefined or unrepresentable values. Such values do not necessarily represent overflow conditions. A NaN also results from attempted coercion to numeric values of non-numeric values for which no primitive numeric value is available.

For example, dividing zero by zero results in a NaN — but dividing other numbers by zero does not.

Since the very earliest versions of the isNaN function specification, its behavior for non-numeric arguments has been confusing. When the argument to the isNaN function is not of type Number, the value is first coerced to a Number. The resulting value is then tested to determine whether it is NaN. Thus for non-numbers that when coerced to numeric type result in a valid non-NaN numeric value (notably the empty string and boolean primitives, which when coerced give numeric values zero or one), the "false" returned value may be unexpected; the empty string, for example, is surely "not a number." The confusion stems from the fact that the term, "not a number", has a specific meaning for numbers represented as IEEE-754 floating-point values. The function should be interpreted as answering the question, "is this value, when coerced to a numeric value, an IEEE-754 'Not A Number' value?"

ECMAScript 2015 contains the Number.isNaN() function. Number.isNaN(x) is a reliable way to test whether x is NaN or not. Even with Number.isNaN, however, the meaning of NaN remains the precise numeric meaning and not, "not a number". Alternatively, in the absence of Number.isNaN, the expression (x != x) is a more reliable way to test whether variable x is NaN or not, as the result is not subject to the false positives that make isNaN unreliable.

A polyfill for isNaN would be (the polyfill leverages the unique never-equal-to-itself characteristic of NaN):

const isNaN = function(value) {
    const n = Number(value);
    return n !== n;
};

There is a more usage oriented way to think of isNaN(): If isNaN(x) returns false, you can use x in an arithmetic expression not making the expression return NaN. If it returns true, x will make every arithmetic expression return NaN. This means that in JavaScript, isNaN(x) == true is equivalent to x - 0 returning NaN (though in JavaScript x - 0 == NaN always returns false, so you can't test for it). Actually, isNaN(x), isNaN(x - 0), isNaN(Number(x)), Number.isNaN(x - 0), and Number.isNaN(Number(x)) always return the same and in JavaScript isNaN(x) is just the shortest possible form to express each of these terms.

You can use this, for example, to test whether an argument to a function is arithmetically processable (usable "like" a number), or if it's not and you have to provide a default value or something else. This way you can have a function that makes use of the full versatility JavaScript provides by implicitly converting values depending on context.

• NaN
• Number.isNaN()