Type Math.min & Math.max using generic

Search Terms

• Math.min generic
• Math.max generic

Suggestion

Currently, Math.min is typed as:

min(...values: number[]): number;

However, I would like to change the definition to:

min<T extends number>(...values: [T, ...T[]]): T;
min(): number; // Because this will return Infinity

Because Math.min should never return things that aren’t its input. (Except when non-number is passed in, then it’ll return NaN. But that’s impossible with this typing.)

(Okay, there’s another case: if no value is passed in, it’ll return Infinity. Unfortunately, there’s no literal type for Infinity so we can’t type that correctly. ~And AFAIK there’s no way to force at least 1 parameter with rest args.~ Updated: there is, using tuple type: [T, ...T[]]. Proposal updated. Still, it would be nice to have literal Infinity type.)

(The same applies with Math.max, except Infinity is now -Infinity)

Use Cases

Let’s say I have this type:

type TBankNoteValues = 1 | 5 | 10 | 20 | 50 | 100;

And I want to know what is the highest-value banknote I have in the array. I could use Math.max to find that out. But with the current typing, the return value isn’t guaranteed to be TBankNoteValues.

let values: TBankNoteValues[] = [50, 100, 20];
let maxValues = Math.max(...values); // number

And now I can’t pass maxValues to a function that expects TBankNoteValues anymore.

Examples

type TBankNoteValues = 1 | 5 | 10 | 20 | 50 | 100;

let values: TBankNoteValues[] = [50, 100, 20];
let maxValues = Math.max(...values);
// Current type: number
// Expected type: TBankNoteValues

Playground link

Checklist

My suggestion meets these guidelines:

• This wouldn’t be a breaking change in existing TypeScript/JavaScript code
  • Shouldn’t be any. Anything that expects the old signature, TypeScript should just infer T to number.
  • Now that I think about it, this make the return type of the function narrows down. So, it could make type inference on a variable declaration changes unexpectedly. An explicit type annotation should fix this.
• This wouldn’t change the runtime behavior of existing JavaScript code
• This could be implemented without emitting different JS based on the types of the expressions
• This isn’t a runtime feature (e.g. library functionality, non-ECMAScript syntax with JavaScript output, etc.)
• This feature would agree with the rest of TypeScript’s Design Goals.

[BernardoMariano]

I don’t think annotating the generic as <T extends number> is correct because T don’t necessarily have to extend number, it is stated on the language that:

Returns NaN if any of the parameters is or is converted into NaN.

Meaning that it could be a string as well.

Math.min("5", "6e10") // correctly returns 5
Math.max("5", "6e10") // correctly returns 60000000000

[MartinJohns]

And since it’s impossible to type literal Infinity (I tried)

Related: #32277