How to convert numbers to exponential form in JavaScript?

Published November 11, 2020

To convert any number to exponential form, you can use the toExponential() Number method in JavaScript.

Consider this number,

// number
const num = 45678;

Let's convert this to exponential form using the toExponential() method like this,

// number
const num = 45678;

// convert to exponential form
const expNum = num.toExponential();

console.log(expNum); // "4.5678e+4"

The method also accepts an optional argument to specify the number of digits to show after the decimal point. Suppose if we want only 2 digits to show after the decimal point, we can pass that 2 as an argument to the method like this,

// number
const num = 45678;

// convert to exponential form
// pass 2 to show 2 digits after
// decimal point
const expNum = num.toExponential(2);

console.log(expNum); // "4.57e+4"

Now the output looks like this: 4.57e+4.

See this example live in JSBin.

• ✅ One important thing to note here is that the toExponential() number method returns the value as a string type and not as a number type.

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