Introduction to DataTypes and Values

Special numbers

There are three special values in JavaScript that are considered numbers but don't behave like normal numbers.

The first two are Infinity and -Infinity, which represent the positive and negative infinities. Infinity - 1 is still Infinity, and so on. Don't put too much trust in infinity-based computation, though. It isn't mathematically sound, and it will quickly lead to the next special number: NaN.

NaN stands for "not a number", even though it is a value of the number type. You'll get this result when you, for example, try to calculate 0 / 0 (zero divided by zero), Infinity - Infinity, or any number of other numeric operations that don't yield a meaningful result.