JavaScript Strings – Iampsp Blog

Strings are for storing text

Strings are written with quotes

Using Quotes

A JavaScript string is zero or more characters written inside quotes.

let text = "John Doe";

You can use single or double quotes:

let carName1 = "Volvo XC60";  // Double quotes
let carName2 = 'Volvo XC60';  // Single quotes

Strings created with single or double quotes work the same.

There is no difference between the two.

You can use quotes inside a string, as long as they don’t match the quotes surrounding the string:

let answer1 = "It's alright";
let answer2 = "He is called 'Johnny'";
let answer3 = 'He is called "Johnny"';

Templates were introduced with ES6 (JavaScript 2016).

Templates are strings enclosed in backticks (`This is a template string`).

Templates allow single and double quotes inside a string:

let text = `He's often called "Johnny"`;

Templates are not supported in Internet Explorer.

To find the length of a string, use the built-in length property:

let text = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
let length = text.length;

Because strings must be written within quotes, JavaScript will misunderstand this string:

let text = "We are the so-called "Vikings" from the north.";

The string will be chopped to “We are the so-called “.

To solve this problem, you can use an backslash escape character.

The backslash escape character (\) turns special characters into string characters:

\” inserts a double quote in a string:

let text = "We are the so-called \"Vikings\" from the north.";

\’ inserts a single quote in a string:

let text= 'It\'s alright.';

\\ inserts a backslash in a string:

let text = "The character \\ is called backslash.";

Six other escape sequences are valid in JavaScript:

The 6 escape characters above were originally designed to control typewriters, teletypes, and fax machines. They do not make any sense in HTML.