[javascript] Convert boolean result into number/integer

I have a variable that stores false or true, but I need 0 or 1 instead, respectively. How can I do this?

You could do this by simply extending the boolean prototype

Boolean.prototype.intval = function(){return ~~this}

It is not too easy to understand what is going on there so an alternate version would be

Boolean.prototype.intval = function(){return (this == true)?1:0}

having done which you can do stuff like

document.write(true.intval());

When I use booleans to store conditions I often convert them to bitfields in which case I end up using an extended version of the prototype function

Boolean.prototype.intval = function(places)
{
 places = ('undefined' == typeof(places))?0:places; 
 return (~~this) << places
}

with which you can do

document.write(true.intval(2))

which produces 4 as its output.

You can also add 0, use shift operators or xor:

val + 0;
val ^ 0;
val >> 0;
val >>> 0;
val << 0;

These have similar speeds as those from the others answers.

I just came across this shortcut today.

~~(true)

~~(false)

People much smarter than I can explain:

http://james.padolsey.com/javascript/double-bitwise-not/

The unary + operator will take care of this:

var test = true;
// +test === 1
test = false;
// +test === 0

You'll naturally want to sanity-check this on the server before storing it, so that might be a more sensible place to do this anyway, though.

I have tested all of this examples, I did a benchmark, and finally I recommend you choose the shorter one, it doesn't affect in performance.

Runned in Ubuntu server 14.04, nodejs v8.12.0 - 26/10/18

    let i = 0;
console.time("TRUE test1")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        true ? 1 : 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test1")


console.time("FALSE test2")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        false ? 1 : 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test2")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test1.1")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        true === true ? 1 : 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test1.1")


console.time("FALSE test2.1")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        false === true ? 1 : 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test2.1")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test3")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        true | 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test3")

console.time("FALSE test4")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        false | 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test4")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test5")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        true * 1;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test5")

console.time("FALSE test6")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        false * 1;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test6")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test7")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        true & 1;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test7")

console.time("FALSE test8")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        false & 1;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test8")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test9")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        +true;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test9")

console.time("FALSE test10")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        +false;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test10")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test9.1")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        0+true;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test9.1")

console.time("FALSE test10.1")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        0+false;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test10.1")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test9.2")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        -true*-1;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test9.2")

console.time("FALSE test10.2")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        -false*-1;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test10.2")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test9.3")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        true-0;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test9.3")

console.time("FALSE test10.3")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        false-0;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test10.3")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test11")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        Number(true);
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test11")

console.time("FALSE test12")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        Number(false);
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test12")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test13")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        true + 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test13")

console.time("FALSE test14")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        false + 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test14")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test15")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        true ^ 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test15")

console.time("FALSE test16")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        false ^ 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test16")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test17")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        true ^ 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test17")

console.time("FALSE test18")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        false ^ 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test18")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test19")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        true >> 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test19")

console.time("FALSE test20")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        false >> 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test20")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test21")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        true >>> 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test21")

console.time("FALSE test22")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        false >>> 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test22")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test23")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        true << 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test23")

console.time("FALSE test24")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        false << 0;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test24")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test25")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        ~~true;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test25")

console.time("FALSE test26")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        ~~false;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test26")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test25.1")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        ~true*-1-1;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test25.1")

console.time("FALSE test26.1")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        ~false*-1-1;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test26.1")

console.log("----------------------------")

console.time("TRUE test27")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        true/1;
    }
console.timeEnd("TRUE test27")

console.time("FALSE test28")
    i=0;
    for(;i<100000000;i=i+1){
        false/1;
    }
console.timeEnd("FALSE test28")

Result

TRUE test1: 93.301ms
FALSE test2: 102.854ms
----------------------------
TRUE test1.1: 118.979ms
FALSE test2.1: 119.061ms
----------------------------
TRUE test3: 97.265ms
FALSE test4: 108.389ms
----------------------------
TRUE test5: 85.854ms
FALSE test6: 87.449ms
----------------------------
TRUE test7: 83.126ms
FALSE test8: 84.992ms
----------------------------
TRUE test9: 99.683ms
FALSE test10: 87.080ms
----------------------------
TRUE test9.1: 85.587ms
FALSE test10.1: 86.050ms
----------------------------
TRUE test9.2: 85.883ms
FALSE test10.2: 89.066ms
----------------------------
TRUE test9.3: 86.722ms
FALSE test10.3: 85.187ms
----------------------------
TRUE test11: 86.245ms
FALSE test12: 85.808ms
----------------------------
TRUE test13: 84.192ms
FALSE test14: 84.173ms
----------------------------
TRUE test15: 81.575ms
FALSE test16: 81.699ms
----------------------------
TRUE test17: 81.979ms
FALSE test18: 81.599ms
----------------------------
TRUE test19: 81.578ms
FALSE test20: 81.452ms
----------------------------
TRUE test21: 115.886ms
FALSE test22: 88.935ms
----------------------------
TRUE test23: 82.077ms
FALSE test24: 81.822ms
----------------------------
TRUE test25: 81.904ms
FALSE test26: 82.371ms
----------------------------
TRUE test25.1: 82.319ms
FALSE test26.1: 96.648ms
----------------------------
TRUE test27: 89.943ms
FALSE test28: 83.646ms

if you want integer x value change if 1 to 0 and if 0 to 1 you can use (x + 1) % 2

+!! allows you to apply this on a variable even when it's undefined:

+!!undefined    // 0
+!!false        // 0
+!!true         // 1

+!!(<boolean expression>)  // 1 if it evaluates to true, 0 otherwise

let integerVariable = booleanVariable * 1;

The typed way to do this would be:

Number(true) // 1
Number(false) // 0

I created a JSperf comparison of all suggested answers.

TL;DR - the best option for all current browsers is:

val | 0;

.

Update:

It seems like these days they are all pretty identical, except that the Number() function is the slowest, while the best being val === true ? 1 : 0;.

TL;DR: Avoid Number constructor, unary +; use a simple if all the time; resort to bool | 0 or 1 * bool if benchmarks in your project do better this way.

This is quite an old question, and there exist many valid answers. Something I've noticed is that all benchmarks here are irrelevant - none take into account branch prediction. Also, nowadays, JS engines don't simply interpret the code, they JIT compile it to native machine code and optimize it prior to execution. This means that, besides branch prediction, the compiler can even substitute expressions with their final value.

Now, how do these 2 factors affect the performance of, well, boolean to integer conversion? Let's find out! Before we get into the benchmarks, it is important to know what we benchmark. For the conversion, we're using the following seven conversion methods:

• Number constructor: Number(bool)
• If statement (ternary used): bool ? 1 : 0
• Unary operator +: +bool
• Bitwise OR: bool | 0
• Bitwise AND: bool & 1
• Bitwise double NOT: ~~bool
• Number multiplication: bool * 1

"Conversion" means converting false to 0 and true to 1¹. Each conversion method is ran 100000 times, measuring operations/millisecond. In the following tables, conversion methods will be grouped to their results accordingly. The results are from my machine, which features an AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS as its CPU.

The first benchmark converts the constant true:

Interesting! V8 shows some huge numbers, all of them approximately the same! Spidermonkey doesn't really shine, but we can see that the bitwise and multiplication tricks come first, and the ternary if second. What are the takeaways? Chrome browsers manage to replace our conversions with simply the value 1. This optimization will take place where we can mentally replace the boolean to a constant value.

That above isn't a situation we'll ever encounter in real projects. So let's change our variables: the bool is now Math.random() < 0.5. This yields a 50% chance of true, 50% of false. Do our results change? Let's run this benchmark to see.

The results are more consistent now. We see similar numbers for ternary if, bitwise, and multiplication methods, but the Number constructor and unary + perform better on V8. We can presume from the numbers that V8 replaces them with whatever instructions it's using for the bitwise tricks, but in Spidermonkey those functions do all the work.

We haven't still tackled one factor we mentioned above: branch prediction. Let's change, in this benchmark, our boolean variable to Math.random() < 0.01, which means 1% true, 99% false.

Unexpected? Expected? I'd say the latter, because in this case branch prediction was successful in almost all cases, given the tiny difference between the ternary if and bitwise hacks. All other results are the same, not much else to say here.

This endeavour brings us back to the original question: how to convert bool to int in Javascript? Here are my suggestions:

• Avoid Number(bool) and +bool. These 2 methods do a lot of work under the hood, and even though Chrome managed to optimize them in our benchmarks, Firefox did not, and there might be some situations where these optimizations won't be done by the compiler. Besides that, not everyone's on Chrome! I still have to put up with that, don't you?...
• Use if statements, in general. Don't get smart - the browser will do better, usually, and usually means most of the situations. They are the most readable and clear out of all the methods here. While we're at readability, maybe use if (bool) instead of that ugly ternary! I wish Javascript had what Rust or Python have...
• Use the rest when it's truly necessary. Maybe benchmarks in your project perform sub-standard, and you found that a nasty if causes bad performance - if that's the case, feel free to get into branchless programming! But don't go too deep in that rabbit hole, nobody will benefit from things like -1 * (a < b) + 1 * (a > b), believe me.

I will be forever grateful to you for reading until the end - this is my first longer, significant StackOverflow answer and it means the world to me if it's been helpful and insightful. If you find any errors, feel free to correct me!

1. Defined the conversion because it's not truly clear what boolean to integer means. For example, Go does not support this conversion at all.

Use the unary + operator, which converts its operand into a number.

+ true; // 1
+ false; // 0

Note, of course, that you should still sanitise the data on the server side, because a user can send any data to your sever, no matter what the client-side code says.

In my context, React Native where I am getting opacity value from boolean, the easiest way: Use unary + operator.

+ true; // 1
+ false; // 0

This converts the boolean into number;

style={ opacity: +!isFirstStep() }

I was just dealing with this issue in some code I was writing. My solution was to use a bitwise and.

var j = bool & 1;

A quicker way to deal with a constant problem would be to create a function. It's more readable by other people, better for understanding at the maintenance stage, and gets rid of the potential for writing something wrong.

function toInt( val ) {
    return val & 1;
}

var j = toInt(bool);

Edit - September 10th, 2014

No conversion using a ternary operator with the identical to operator is faster in Chrome for some reason. Makes no sense as to why it's faster, but I suppose it's some sort of low level optimization that makes sense somewhere along the way.

var j = boolValue === true ? 1 : 0;

Test for yourself: http://jsperf.com/boolean-int-conversion/2

In FireFox and Internet Explorer, using the version I posted is faster generally.

Edit - July 14th, 2017

Okay, I'm not going to tell you which one you should or shouldn't use. Every freaking browser has been going up and down in how fast they can do the operation with each method. Chrome at one point actually had the bitwise & version doing better than the others, but then it suddenly was much worse. I don't know what they're doing, so I'm just going to leave it at who cares. There's rarely any reason to care about how fast an operation like this is done. Even on mobile it's a nothing operation.

Also, here's a newer method for adding a 'toInt' prototype that cannot be overwritten.

Object.defineProperty(Boolean.prototype, "toInt", { value: function()
{
    return this & 1;
}});

Imho the best solution is:

fooBar | 0

This is used in asm.js to force integer type.

I prefer to use the Number function. It takes an object and converts it to a number.

Example:

var myFalseBool = false;
var myTrueBool = true;

var myFalseInt = Number(myFalseBool);
console.log(myFalseInt === 0);

var myTrueInt = Number(myTrueBool);
console.log(myTrueInt === 1);

You can test it in a jsFiddle.

try

val*1

let t=true;_x000D_
let f=false;_x000D_
_x000D_
console.log(t*1);_x000D_
console.log(f*1)

When JavaScript is expecting a number value but receives a boolean instead it converts that boolean into a number: true and false convert into 1 and 0 respectively. So you can take advantage of this;

var t = true;_x000D_
var f = false;_x000D_
_x000D_
console.log(t*1); // t*1 === 1_x000D_
console.log(f*1); // f*1 === 0 _x000D_
_x000D_
console.log(+t); // 0+t === 1 or shortened to +t === 1_x000D_
console.log(+f); //0+f === 0 or shortened to +f === 0

Further reading Type Conversions Chapter 3.8 of The Definitive Guide to Javascript.