With the help of the Symbol.toPrimitive
property (used as a function value), an object can be converted to a primitive value. The function is called with a string argument hint
, which specifies the preferred type of the result primitive value. The hint
argument can be one of "number"
, "string"
, and "default"
.
The "number"
hint is used by numeric coercion algorithms. The "string"
hint is used by the string coercion algorithm. The "default"
hint is used by the primitive coercion algorithm. The hint
only acts as a weak signal of preference, and the implementation is free to ignore it (as Symbol.prototype[@@toPrimitive]()
does). The language does not enforce alignment between the hint
and the result type, although [@@toPrimitive]()
must return a primitive, or a TypeError
is thrown.
Objects without the @@toPrimitive
property are converted to primitives by calling the valueOf()
and toString()
methods in different orders, which is explained in more detail in the type coercion section. @@toPrimitive
allows full control over the primitive conversion process. For example, Date.prototype[@@toPrimitive]
treats "default"
as if it's "string"
and calls toString()
instead of valueOf()
. Symbol.prototype[@@toPrimitive]
ignores the hint and always returns a symbol, which means even in string contexts, Symbol.prototype.toString()
won't be called, and Symbol
objects must always be explicitly converted to strings through String()
.