How can I build/concatenate strings in JavaScript?

Question

Does JavaScript support substitution/interpolation?

Overview

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I'm working on a JavaScript project, and as it's getting bigger, keeping strings in good shape is getting a lot harder. I'm wondering what's the easiest and most conventional way to construct or build strings in JavaScript.

My experience so far:

String concatenation starts looking ugly and becomes harder to maintain as the project becomes more complex.

The most important this at this point is succinctness and readability, think a bunch of moving parts, not just 2-3 variables.

It's also important that it's supported by major browsers as of today (i.e., at least ES5 supported).

I'm aware of the JavaScript concatenation shorthand:

var x = 'Hello';
var y = 'world';
console.log(x + ', ' + y);

And of the String.concat function.

I'm looking for something a bit neater.

Ruby and Swift do it in an interesting way.

Ruby

var x = 'Hello'
var y = 'world'
print "#{x}, #{y}"

Swift

var x = "Hello"
var y = "world"
println("\(x), \(y)")

I was thinking that there might be something like that in JavaScript maybe something similar to sprintf.js.

Question

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Can this be done without a third-party library? If not, what can I use?

Answer 1

I'm disappointed that nobody in the other answers interpreted "best way" as "fastest way"...

I pulled the 2 examples from here and added str.join() and str.reduce() from nishanths's answer above. Here are my results on Firefox 77.0.1 on Linux.

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Note: I discovered while testing these that if I place str = str.concat() and str += directly before or after each other, the second one always performs a fair bit better... So I ran these tests individually and commented the others out for the results...

Even still, they varied widely in speed if I reran them, so I measured 3 times for each.

1 character at a time:

• str = str.concat(): 841, 439, 956 ms / 1e7 concat()'s
• ............str +=: 949, 1130, 664 ms / 1e7 +='s
• .........[].join(): 3350, 2911, 3522 ms / 1e7 characters in []
• .......[].reduce(): 3954, 4228, 4547 ms / 1e7 characters in []

26 character string at a time:

• str = str.concat(): 444, 744, 479 ms / 1e7 concat()'s
• ............str +=: 1037, 473, 875 ms / 1e7 +='s
• .........[].join(): 2693, 3394, 3457 ms / 1e7 strings in []
• .......[].reduce(): 2782, 2770, 4520 ms / 1e7 strings in []

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So, regardless of whether appending 1 character at a time or a string of 26 at a time:

• Clear winner: basically a tie between str = str.concat() and str +=
• Clear loser: [].reduce(), followed by [].join()

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My code, easy to run in a browser console:

{
  console.clear();

  let concatMe = 'a';
  //let concatMe = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz';

  //[].join()
  {
    s = performance.now();
    let str = '', sArr = [];
    for (let i = 1e7; i > 0; --i) {
      sArr[i] = concatMe;
    }
    str = sArr.join('');
    e = performance.now();
    console.log(e - s);
    console.log('[].join(): ' + str);
  }

  //str +=
  {
    s = performance.now();
    let str = '';
    for (let i = 1e7; i > 0; --i) {
      str += concatMe;
    }
    e = performance.now();
    console.log(e - s);
    console.log('str +=: ' + str);
  }

  //[].reduce()
  {
    s = performance.now();
    let str = '', sArr = [];
    for (let i = 1e7; i > 0; --i) {
      sArr[i] = concatMe;
    }
    str = sArr.reduce(function(pre, next) {
      return pre + next;
    });
    e = performance.now();
    console.log(e - s);
    console.log('[].reduce(): ' + str);
  }

  //str = str.concat()
  {
    s = performance.now();
    let str = '';
    for (let i = 1e7; i > 0; --i) {
      str = str.concat(concatMe);
    }
    e = performance.now();
    console.log(e - s);
    console.log('str = str.concat(): ' + str);
  }

  'Done';
}

Answer 2

I think replace() deserves mentioning here.

During some conditions, the replace method can serve you well when building strings. Specifically, obviously, when your injecting a dynamic part into an otherwise static string. Example:

var s = 'I am {0} today!';
var result = s.replace('{0}', 'hungry');
// result: 'I am hungry today!'

The placeholder which to replace can obviously be anything. I use "{0}", "{1}" etc out of habit from C#. It just needs to be unique enough not to occur in the string other than where intended.

So, provided we can fiddle with the string parts a bit, OPs example could be solved like this too:

var x = 'Hello {0}';
var y = 'World';
var result = x.replace('{0}', y);
// result: 'Hello World'. -Oh the magic of computing!

Reference for "replace": https://www.w3schools.com/jsreF/jsref_replace.asp

Answer 3

With ES6, you can use

• Template strings:

  var username = 'craig';
  console.log(`hello ${username}`);
  

ES5 and below:

• use the + operator

  var username = 'craig';
  var joined = 'hello ' + username;
  

• String's concat(..)

  var username = 'craig';
  var joined = 'hello '.concat(username);
  

Alternatively, use Array methods:

• join(..):

  var username = 'craig';
  var joined = ['hello', username].join(' ');
  

• Or even fancier, reduce(..) combined with any of the above:

  var a = ['hello', 'world', 'and', 'the', 'milky', 'way'];
  var b = a.reduce(function(pre, next) {
    return pre + ' ' + next;
  });
  console.log(b); // hello world and the milky way
  

Answer 4

You could use Coffeescript, it's made to make javascript code more concise.. For string concatenation, you could do something like this:

first_name = "Marty"
full_name = "#{first_name} McFly"
console.log full_name

Maybe you can start here to see what's offered by coffescript..

Answer 5

var descriptor = 'awesome';
console.log(`ES6 is ${descriptor}!`);

More: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/01/ES6-Template-Strings?hl=en

Answer 6

You could use the concat function.

var hello = "Hello ";
var world = "world!";
var res = hello.concat(world);