The JavaScript exception "BigInt negative exponent" occurs when a
is raised to the power of a negative BigInt value.
RangeError: Exponent must be positive (V8-based) RangeError: BigInt negative exponent (Firefox) RangeError: Negative exponent is not allowed (Safari)
.
The exponent of an
operation must be positive. Since negative exponents would take the reciprocal of the base, the result will be between -1 and 1 in almost all cases, which gets rounded to 0n. To catch mistakes, negative exponents are not allowed. Check if the exponent is non-negative before doing exponentiation.
Using a negative BigInt as exponent
js
const a = 1n; const b = -1n; const c = a ** b; // RangeError: BigInt negative exponent Instead, check if the exponent is negative first, and either issue an error with a better message, or fall back to a different value, like 0n or undefined.
js
const a = 1n; const b = -1n; const quotient = b >= 0n ? a ** b : 0n;