How do you test for NaN in JavaScript?

Solution 1:

Short Answer

For ECMAScript-5 Users:

#1
if(x !== x) {
    console.info('x is NaN.');
}
else {
    console.info('x is NOT a NaN.');
}

For people using ECMAScript-6:

#2
Number.isNaN(x);

And For consistency purpose across ECMAScript 5 & 6 both, you can also use this polyfill for Number.isNan

#3
//Polyfill from MDN
Number.isNaN = Number.isNaN || function(value) {
    return typeof value === "number" && isNaN(value);
}
// Or
Number.isNaN = Number.isNaN || function(value) {     
    return value !== value;
}

Note: I prefer to test using #1 which works same all places and does not have dependency on latest JS also. (It always gives me correct result. No surprises!)

Detailed Explanation:

Here is our awesome NaN

NaN == NaN; // false
NaN === NaN; // false

Please don't blame JavaScript for this, it is NaN which is supposed to behave this way in other languages also Which is fine as per rationale for all comparisons returning false NaN values

So comes isNaN as our savior, but wait it acts little differently in some scenarios like

isNaN(undefined); // true
isNaN({});        // true
isNaN("lorem ipsum"); // true

I had some strange faces by seeing the results above. And here comes reason from MDN

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.

So how should we test NaN for the non-numbers variables at all? I always go by the following

if(x !== x) {
    console.info('Is a NaN');
}
else {
    console.info('Not a NaN');
}

ECMAScript-6/JavaScript-2015 Updates

Do we have anything in ECMAScript-6 for the same. Yup we do...

Number.isNaN(x); // true

The ES6 implementation will also be helpful for the above cases like

Number.isNaN(undefined); // false
Number.isNaN({}); // false    
Number.isNaN("lorem ipsum"); // false

whereas ECMAScript-5 global function isNaN outputs in true for the above cases, which sometimes may not align with our expectation.

Solution 2:

The question has the answer if you read closely enough. That is the way I found it: I was typing out the question and... bingo.

You remember when I wrote "NaN is like NULL in SQL, it is not equal to anything, even itself"? So far as I know, NaN is the only value in Javascript with this property. Therefore you can write:

var reallyIsNaN = function(x) {
   return x !== x;
};