I think in every language I know
if(a)
is the same thing as
if(a == true)
Turns out in JavaScript it isn't true, because:
if([])
Seems to act as if the condition is fulfilled, but:
if([] == true)
Does the opposite thing.
I can't really find any possible explanation, especially that this problem doesn't occur with empty string for example (which is == true, but isn't === true, same as empty array). Is this a bug in JavaScript or what?
In JavaScript, there is a concept of truthy and falsey values. if statements test the truthiness or falsiness of a given value rather than strict equality to true or false.
true is obviously truthy. false is obviously falsey. The rest can be a little tricky. MDN has possibly the clearest documentation about which values evaluate to falsey: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Truthy
In this case [] is a truthy value so the condition passes and the code is executed.
if(a) [...] same as [...] if(a == true)- erm, that might just be PHP and maybe Python? It's not nearly universal to be able to convert an arbitrary value into a boolean. At any rate, here is how truthy/falsey values work in JS.