What is the purpose of a plus symbol before a variable?

Question

this really sounds like a simple question but I had no luck searching. what does the +d in

function addMonths(d, n, keepTime) { 
    if (+d) {
         


        

Answer 1

Operator + is a unary operator which converts value to number. Below I prepared a table with corresponding results of using this operator for different values.

+-----------------------------+-----------+
| Value                       | + (Value) |
+-----------------------------+-----------+
| 1                           | 1         |
| '-1'                        | -1        |
| '3.14'                      | 3.14      |
| '3'                         | 3         |
| '0xAA'                      | 170       |
| true                        | 1         |
| false                       | 0         |
| null                        | 0         |
| 'Infinity'                  | Infinity  |
| 'infinity'                  | NaN       |
| '10a'                       | NaN       |
| undefined                   | Nan       |
| ['Apple']                   | Nan       |
| function(val){ return val } | NaN       |
+-----------------------------+-----------+

Operator + returns value for objects which have implemented method valueOf.

let something = {
    valueOf: function () {
        return 25;
    }
};

console.log(+something);

Answer 2

As explained in other answers it converts the variable to a number. Specially useful when d can be either a number or a string that evaluates to a number.

Example (using the addMonths function in the question):

addMonths(34,1,true);
addMonths("34",1,true);

then the +d will evaluate to a number in all cases. Thus avoiding the need to check for the type and take different code paths depending on whether d is a number, a function or a string that can be converted to a number.

Answer 3

It is a unary "+" operator which yields a numeric expression. It would be the same as d*1, I believe.

Answer 4

The + operator returns the numeric representation of the object. So in your particular case, it would appear to be predicating the if on whether or not d is a non-zero number.

Reference here. And, as pointed out in comments, here.