Division (/)
Baseline
Widely available
This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.
The division (/) operator produces the quotient of its operands where the left operand is the dividend and the right operand is the divisor.
Try it
console.log(12 / 2);
// Expected output: 6
console.log(3 / 2);
// Expected output: 1.5
console.log(6 / "3");
// Expected output: 2
console.log(2 / 0);
// Expected output: Infinity
Syntax
x / y
Description
The / operator is overloaded for two types of operands: number and BigInt. It first coerces both operands to numeric values and tests the types of them. It performs BigInt division if both operands become BigInts; otherwise, it performs number division. A TypeError is thrown if one operand becomes a BigInt but the other becomes a number.
For BigInt division, the result is the quotient of the two operands truncated towards zero, and the remainder is discarded. A RangeError is thrown if the divisor y is 0n. This is because number division by zero returns Infinity or -Infinity, but BigInt has no concept of infinity.
Examples
Division using numbers
1 / 2; // 0.5
Math.floor(3 / 2); // 1
1.0 / 2.0; // 0.5
2 / 0; // Infinity
2.0 / 0.0; // Infinity, because 0.0 === 0
2.0 / -0.0; // -Infinity
Other non-BigInt values are coerced to numbers:
5 / "2"; // 2.5
5 / "foo"; // NaN
Division using BigInts
1n / 2n; // 0n
5n / 3n; // 1n
-1n / 3n; // 0n
1n / -3n; // 0n
2n / 0n; // RangeError: BigInt division by zero
You cannot mix BigInt and number operands in division.
2n / 2; // TypeError: Cannot mix BigInt and other types, use explicit conversions
2 / 2n; // TypeError: Cannot mix BigInt and other types, use explicit conversions
To do division with a BigInt and a non-BigInt, convert either operand:
2n / BigInt(2); // 1n
Number(2n) / 2; // 1
Specifications
| Specification |
|---|
| ECMAScript® 2027 Language Specification # sec-multiplicative-operators |