
Trailing commas in function arguments
Trailing commas are the commas that are used after the last argument of a function. Using a comma after the last parameter of a function can be useful because it is very common for programmers to forget to add a comma when they modify an existing function by adding additional parameters.
For example, the following function only takes one parameter and doesn't use trailing commas:
function greetWithoutTralingCommas( name: string ): string { return `Hi! ${name}`; }
After some time, we might be required to add a parameter to the preceding function. A common mistake is to declare the new parameter and forget to add a comma after the first parameter:
function updatedGreetWithoutTralingCommas( name: string surname: string, // Error ): string { return `Hi! ${name} ${surname}`; }
Using a trailing comma in the first version of the function could have helped us to prevent this common mistake:
function greetWithTralingCommas( name: string, ): string { return `Hi! ${name}`; }
Using a trailing comma eliminates the possibility of forgetting the comma when adding a new argument:
function updatedGreetWithTralingCommas( name: string, surname: string, ): string { return `Hi! ${name} ${surname}`; }