What's an idiomatic way to handle illegal argument in JavaScript?

Question

Let's say I have a function that accepts only non-negative numbers and I receive a negative argument.

In Python, I would raise a ValueError. In Java, I would throw an IllegalArgumentException. Is there any built-in exception I should throw in JavaScript, or should I return undefined?

Answer 1

This is a common asked question: To throw an exception, or to return?

I suggest you see this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1153149/2557927

If your method can't do what its name says it does, throw.

According to MDN, you probably wanted to throw RangeError("x should be a non-negative number");. Although JavaScript does not limit the data type of what can be thrown, I think that throwing a Error class is better than throwing a string since it is easier to be caught by uplevel functions.