What is the purpose of specifying an 'any' return type in TypeScript?

As an example:

function retrieveUserInformation(input: any): any {
    return input
}

It may seem unnecessary to declare that "any data type can be returned". Is there a specific reason for this?

Answer №1

Being a little lazy or clueless can sometimes have its benefits.

However, it's important not to see this as a negative thing!

There are times when being "lazy" with typing can actually be a time-saver. When the task at hand is too complex to type out fully, shortcuts can come in handy, as mentioned by artem.

It may introduce some flexibility in coding practices (although it could potentially lead to messy code in the long run).

There are situations where you might be completely unaware of the exact return type from an API call or javascript function that seems like a mystery box. It could dynamically generate an object with numerous potential return structures.

For example: how would you define the output of the eval function if the input could be various json expressions, numbers, strings, etc?

Instead of listing out all possible types like

object | number | string | boolean | null
, using any can make things more readable.

Nevertheless, it's best to limit the use of this practice as much as possible, as it's generally frowned upon.

In certain real-world scenarios, omitting this language feature could add unnecessary complexity to tasks.

EDIT: Almost forgot, but I believe TypeScript should include or have a similar feature according to its specifications: every JavaScript code should be considered valid TypeScript (the compiler will simply treat any JS code as TypeScript and convert it accordingly with the right compiler options).

In such JS-TS code, most variables need to be implicitly typed as any to accommodate this situation.

Answer №2

There really isn't a need to do that for code that was originally written in TypeScript.

In situations where you are working with a function like getUserInput() which has already been implemented in JavaScript, using a declaration with a return type of any can sometimes serve as a shortcut when the actual return type is unclear and you don't want to spend time figuring it out beforehand.

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