They are not equivalent. The first will execute the block following the if
statement if myVar
is truthy (i.e. evaluates to true
in a conditional), while the second will execute the block if myVar
is any value other than null
.
The only values that are not truthy in JavaScript are the following (a.k.a. falsy values):
null
undefined
0
""
(the empty string)false
NaN