Getting Started with JavaScript, v2

Undefined vs Undeclared

Kyle Simpson

Kyle Simpson

You Don't Know JS
Getting Started with JavaScript, v2

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The "Undefined vs Undeclared" Lesson is part of the full, Getting Started with JavaScript, v2 course featured in this preview video. Here's what you'd learn in this lesson:

Kyle explains how the two concepts around emptiness in JavaScript, undefined and undeclared, differ.

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Transcript from the "Undefined vs Undeclared" Lesson

[00:00:00]
>> Kyle Simpson: Let's talk about two very special concepts around emptiness that come into play heavily when we're talking about scope. I just mentioned the idea of a variable never having been declared, the topic variable in that previous slide. It's never been declared. That is the state of undeclared, and a lot of people think the word undefined is the same concept.

[00:00:22]
That being undefined or being undeclared are basically the same thing. They're very distinctly different. Specifically in a program something that is undefined is a variable that has been declared, but it doesn't have a value. And then a variable that is undeclared is one that was never declared anywhere.

[00:00:41]
We just start trying to reference it. And the JavaScript engine has no idea where that is.

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