Exponentiation (**)

The exponentiation operator (**) returns the result of raising the first operand to the power of the second operand. It is equivalent to Math.pow, except it also accepts BigInts as operands.

The exponentiation operator is right-associative: a ** b ** c is equal to a ** (b ** c).

In most languages, such as PHP, Python, and others that have an exponentiation operator (**), the exponentiation operator is defined to have a higher precedence than unary operators, such as unary + and unary -, but there are a few exceptions. For example, in Bash, the ** operator is defined to have a lower precedence than unary operators.

In JavaScript, it is impossible to write an ambiguous exponentiation expression. That is, you cannot put a unary operator (+/-/~/!/delete/void/typeof) immediately before the base number; doing so will cause a SyntaxError.

-2 ** 2;
// 4 in Bash, -4 in other languages.
// This is invalid in JavaScript, as the operation is ambiguous.

-(2 ** 2);
// -4 in JavaScript and the author's intention is unambiguous.

Note that some programming languages use the caret symbol ^ for exponentiation, but JavaScript uses that symbol for the bitwise logical XOR operator.

To invert the sign of the result of an exponentiation expression:

-(2 ** 2) // -4

To force the base of an exponentiation expression to be a negative number:

(-2) ** 2 // 4

• Addition operator
• Subtraction operator
• Division operator
• Multiplication operator
• Remainder operator
• Increment operator
• Decrement operator
• Unary negation operator
• Unary plus operator