In ES5, building strings often required clunky concatenation with + and escape characters. ES6 introduced template literals, which make string handling cleaner, more readable, and more powerful.
The ES5 Way
Before ES6, developers combined strings like this:
var name = 'Mark';
var greeting = 'Hello ' + name;
console.log(greeting); // Hello Mark
Multiline strings required workarounds, either with \n for newlines or by joining arrays:
var name = 'Mark';
var greeting = "Hello \n" + name;
console.log(greeting);
// Hello
// Mark
Or:
var name = 'Mark';
var greeting = [
"Hello ",
name
].join("\n");
console.log(greeting);
// Hello
// Mark
It works, but it’s verbose and messy.
The ES6 Way
With ES6, template literals use backticks ` and support interpolation with ${}. This makes strings far easier to write and maintain:
var name = 'Mark';
var greeting = `Hello
${name}`;
console.log(greeting);
// Hello
// Mark
This approach is not only shorter but also much clearer to read.
Why It Matters
Template literals improve:
- Readability: No more confusing
+operators. - Multiline support: Easily break lines without escape characters.
- Interpolation: Insert variables directly into strings.
Final Thoughts
Both ES5 and ES6 methods exist in legacy code, but modern development favors template literals for their simplicity and clarity. Learning them will save you time and reduce errors in your JavaScript projects.
Stay tuned for more on tagged template literals, another advanced feature of ES6 that expands the power of this syntax.