What is the meaning of "foo(...arg)" (three dots in a function call)?

Question

Can someone tell what is "..." in the below code in the "Intro to Angular" example?

getHeroes() {
    this.backend.getAll(Hero).then( (heroes: Hero[]) => {
      this.logger.log(`Fetched ${heroes.length} heroes.`);
      this.heroes.push(...heroes); // fill cache
    });

Answer 1

This has nothing to do with jQuery or Angular. It's a feature that was introduced in ES2015.

This particular use of ... doesn't actually have an official name. A name that is in line with other uses would be "spread argument" (a generic term would be "spread syntax"). It "explodes" (spreads) an iterable and passes each value as argument to the function. Your example is equivalent to:

this.heroes.push.apply(this.heroes, Array.from(heroes));

Besides being more concise, another advantage of ... here is that it can be more easily used with other concrete arguments:

func(first, second, ...theRest);

// as opposed to the following or something similar:
 func.apply(null, [first, second].concat(Array.from(heroes)));