Question

Is this the correct way to check for a missing parameter in a function? Would this work in all browsers? How about IE?

function getName(name){
    name = name != null ? name : "default";
    return name;
}

Answer 1

you can do:

name = name || 'default';

That says if name is undefined or falsy (null, 0, "", false, {}, []), set it to "default".

js(h|l)int will complain about it, but it works at least as far as back as IE7. It’s not invalid code at all or relying on some undocumented behavior either.