Exponentiation Operator

An operator has been proposed for JavaScript to perform exponentiation in the same way that Math.pow(..) does. Consider:

  1. var a = 2;
  3. a ** 4;            // Math.pow( a, 4 ) == 16
  5. a **= 3;        // a = Math.pow( a, 3 )
  6. a;                // 8

Note: ** is essentially the same as it appears in Python, Ruby, Perl, and others.