How does the minus minus less than "-->" operator work in JavaScript? [duplicate]

Question

while (max --> min)
{
    console.log(n);
}

I know that --> decreases the value, but where is --> documented in the official documentation?

it's two things ... post decrement -- and a greater than comparison > — Jaromanda X
– Jaromanda X, Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 10:00
--> is -- followed by >, two operators... So max-- > min if you prefer. — Jean-Baptiste Yunès
– Jean-Baptiste Yunès, Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 10:01
Somebody either slipped on the keyboard or they thought they were being clever… — deceze
– deceze ♦, Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 10:03
@judgeja Any cleverness that spawns a question on SO because the reader goes "WTF?!" is bad cleverness… — deceze
– deceze ♦, Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 10:07
see also this highly upvoted question (currently the 8th highest upvoted question overall) — Mikescher
– Mikescher, Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 10:54

zerkms · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-26 10:01:29Z

26

It is the post decrement operator -- followed by the greater than operator >. Just the spacing is weird.

while (max-- > min)

So, while max decremented is larger than min…

zerkms

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answered Aug 26, 2016 at 10:00

deceze♦

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5 Comments

Just a nitpick, wouldn't "max decremented is larger than min" be better suited for something like --max > min?

@Aioros "max's value which is decremented afterwards is larger than min" seemed a bit unwieldy. I expect everyone knows how -- works… :)

would this work in for loop like for( let i = 0; i++ < n; )

Check out this CodeWars kata: codewars.com/kata/6359bf1600fba287b6189f9b/javascript Apparently, "-->" on its own is a valid piece of JS code.

P. S. After 5 more minutes of Googling, I now know that due to historical reasons, HTML comments are valid JS code :D