Learning Objective: Understand how to work with strings and their unique properties.

What Are Strings?

A string is a sequence of characters used to represent text in JavaScript. Whether it’s a name, a sentence, or even a symbol, strings are essential for any programming language.

To create a string in JavaScript, you need to wrap your text in quotes. JavaScript supports three types of quotes:

1. Single Quotes
2. Double Quotes
3. Backticks

Examples of Strings

1. Single and Double Quotes

Single and double quotes are essentially the same in JavaScript. They both create simple strings.

Example:

const singleQuoteString = 'Hello, world!';
const doubleQuoteString = "Hello, world!";

You might choose single quotes if your string contains double quotes:

const quote = 'She said, "JavaScript is amazing!"';

Or use double quotes if your string contains single quotes:

const contraction = "It's a wonderful day!";

2. Backticks: Template Literals

Backticks , also known as template literals, offer more functionality than single and double quotes. They allow you to:

1. Embed variables or expressions using ${}:

   const name = "Alice";
   const greeting = `Hello, ${name}!`;
   console.log(greeting); // "Hello, Alice!"

2. Create multi-line strings:

   const multiLine = `This is the first line.
   And this is the second line.`;
   console.log(multiLine);

3. Combine text dynamically:

   const items = 3;
   const price = 20;
   const total = `You bought ${items} items for $${items * price}.`;
   console.log(total); // "You bought 3 items for $60."

Backticks are particularly useful when you need to create strings that involve multiple variables or expressions.

Inspecting Data Types with typeof

You can check if a value is a string using the typeof operator:

const message = "Hello, world!";
console.log(typeof message); // "string"

Interactive Activity

1. Open VS Code and create a new file called strings.js.
2. Try creating strings using:
   • Single quotes for a simple greeting.
   • Double quotes for a message with a quote inside it.
   • Backticks to embed variables or perform calculations within a string.

Example:

const single = 'Learning JavaScript!';
const double = "It's an exciting journey!";
const template = `I solved ${2 + 2} problems today!`;

console.log(single);
console.log(double);
console.log(template);

1. Use typeof to check the data type of each string:

console.log(typeof single); // "string"
console.log(typeof double); // "string"
console.log(typeof template); // "string"

What’s Next?

In this lesson, you’ve learned the basics of how strings work in JavaScript. In upcoming modules, we’ll explore strings in much greater detail, covering topics like:

• Changing the case of strings
• Searching for and extracting substrings
• Reversing, repeating, and trimming strings

For now, get comfortable with the basics of strings, practice creating different types of strings, and experiment with using backticks to make your code dynamic!

Now, let’s explore numbers! 🚀