HTML5 data-* attribute type casting strings and numbers

Question

Why is the value of data-value=\"2.0\" cast to a String and the value of data-value=\"2.5\" cast to a Number? I can handle this fine within my func

Answer 1

I think it's more a question about how jquery identifies numbers. If you use alert(typeof(this.getAttribute("data-value")));, it spits out that it's a string both times (which is expected). So far as I know, everything in an html attribute is considered a string, just different libraries may have default behavior that interprets them differently.

Also, a shorthand way to get a number would be something along the lines of...

var someNumber = +$(someElt).data("value");

the + will cause type coercion if the returned value is a string, or leave it alone if it's already a number.