Hoisting in JavaScript: a Quick Guide

A beginner-friendly overview of the hoisting concept

Hoisting in JavaScript means that variable and function declarations are moved to the top of their containing scope.

What does that translate to in my code?

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The Declaration Comes Before the Assignment

Let’s consider the following snippet of code to understand how hoisting works :

Maybe you expected the console.log to print undefined, since the var statement (the declaration ) comes after rockStar = “Mick Jagger”(the assignment ). We assigned a value to the rockStar variable before it was created in the code.

After all it is logical to think that all the lines of code written in a JavaScript program are read, interpreted, and executed from top to bottom. There is a truth to that assumption, but the behaviour we just demonstrated tells us otherwise.

In real fact, just before the code is executed, it goes through a compiler : during this phase called lexing, scope gets defined and the variable and function declarations are moved to the top of their scope. If they are defined inside a function, they are moved to the top of this function, and if they are outside a function, to the top of the global scope.

Consider this other piece of code :

This time, although we have the rockStar variable declared and assigned, we get an undefined response when we try to print the variable. Why is that ?

The best way to get your head around this is to remember that all declarations are processed first, and this is equally true for variables and functions.

All declarations are processed first, and this is equally true for variables and functions.

Let’s decode what it means by reading the code just as JavaScript does.

When you see var rockStar = “Mick Jagger”, you see it as one statement, but JavaScript sees it otherwise. It actually interprets it as two distinct statements:

In our example, JavaScript first interprets the code, sees that the rockStar variable exists and moves it to the top of the scope: this is what is called hoisting.

But the second statement, the assignment, is left in place. Then, the code is executed by JavaScript as if it were written like this:

In other words, the declaration comes before the assignment: only variable and function declarations are hoisted, while the assignments are left in place, just where they were written in the code.

The declaration comes before the assignment: only variable and function declarations are hoisted, while the assignments are left in place, just where they were written in the code.

Function Declarations Are Hoisted, but Function Expressions Are Not

We have seen examples of variable hoisting, now let’s focus on the behavior of functions .

See the following piece of code :

From what we understand now of hoisting, how can we rewrite this code as if it were JavaScript interpreting it ?

First keep in mind that hoisting is per-scope, and that here the scope of the name variable is the local scope inside of the function movieStar. The variable declaration will then be hoisted to the top of the function, not of the global scope.

However, we also declared the movieStar function in the global scope, and hoisting works the same for variable and function declarations: our function declaration will be moved to the top, before the execution of the function.

The code will be interpreted by JavaScript as follows:

In this example, the movieStar function call works because the function declaration is hoisted, and interpreted as being declared before it was called.

Let’s take another example :

What happened here? The function I assigned to the variable movieStar, a process that is called function expression, is not hoisted this time : when I call the function, JavaScript throws a TypeError.

That is because functions that are assigned to variables are not hoisted.

Functions that are assigned to variables are not hoisted.

As a demonstration, if I now write the code as follows it is now printing the expected result :

Functions Before Variables

We now know that both function declarations and variable declarations are hoisted. But there is another thing to be wary of: functions are hoisted first, and then variables.

Functions are hoisted first, and then variables.

Consider this code where a variable and a function are declared with the same name:

The function has been hoisted before the variable, so when I print the value of businessStar it outputs the function itself.

And another example where the variable is assigned a value :

This time the output is the value of the variable, because the variable has been assigned a value, which overrides the function declaration. If you now try to call the function businessStar(), you will get a TypeError: that’s because businessStar has been assigned the string “Gary Vaynerchuck” and is no longer a function.

Conclusion

Hoisting is Javascript’s default behavior of moving declarations to the top.

Rather than being available right after their declaration, variables and functions might actually be available beforehand in the code, which might lead to certain behaviors that you wouldn’t expect if you knew nothing about hoisting.

That is why as a rule, it is important to make sure, as often as you can, that you:

→ Declare all of your variables at the top of their scope (at the top of the global scope or at the top of the function scope)

→ Make sure you put all your functions, if you can, also at the top of their scope.

Want to learn more about JavaScript basics? Check out my other articles:

• Understand JavaScript Variable Scope with ease
• Wrap your head around “this”
• How to use JavaScript closures with confidence
• Grasp “By Value” and “By Reference” in JavaScript
• A Quick Handbook for Dates in JavaScript
• Work with JavaScript arrays like a boss

I hope you enjoyed this introduction to JavaScript Hoisting.

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