[FIXED] What does the plus sign do in '+new Date'

Issue

I've seen this in a few places

function fn() {
    return +new Date;
}

And I can see that it is returning a timestamp rather than a date object, but I can't find any documentation on what the plus sign is doing.

Can anyone explain?

Solution

That's the + unary operator. It's equivalent to:

function(){ return Number(new Date); }

See http://xkr.us/articles/javascript/unary-add and MDN.

Answered By - kentaromiura

Answer Checked By - Senaida (PHPFixing Volunteer)