Ever since ES6 has introduced let and const, there has been a constant battle of which one to use in which case. There are different opinions on this. Putting that aside, let us explore the differences and on how to use them in different scenarios.

tl;dr

Use const when you are not going to reassign the variable to another reference. Use let in all other cases. Never use var. Period.

var

It is being used ever since JavaScript came into existence. So, it is very much familiar to all the developers.

Here are few points about var:

• var is global/function scoped.
• Variables declared with var are hoisted (Topic for another article) and can be referrenced before it’s declaration.

let

let is a new keyword introduced in ES6, which is similar to var with some added advantages.

• let is block-scoped.

• let Variable declared outside of any function will be treated as global variable, same as var with a difference. Variable declared as let will not be added to Window object.

• Variable declared as let can NOT be redeclared.

• Variable declared as let will NOT be hoisted. The region from the start of the block, till the declaration of variable is called Temporal Dead Zone. The variable can not be accessed in this temporal dead zone. It can only be used once it is declared.

const

• const has to be initialized when it is declared.

• const makes a variable reference immutable. ie. you can NOT reassign a const with another reference.

Pitfall:

const makes variable reference immutable but not it’s value. ie. properties of an object declared using const can be modified.

Closures

Explanation: var makes the variable i closed over the loop whereas let makes the variable block-scoped.

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Written by Kirankumar Ambati who lives and works in Hyderabad. Twitter Linkedin Github

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