Month/Day/Year Function Issue

Question

First post here. I am really curious exactly why the below function does not return the proper month/day/year answer and instead just returns 10.

If I remove the +1 from the var month it returns everything correct, except it is one month behind.

I am beginning to learn CS and any help is much appreciated. If I run this outside a function, it returns the correct answer.

function todaydate() {
var today = new Date();
var month = today.getMonth()+1;
var day = today.getDate();
var year = today.getFullYear();
if (month < 10) {
   month = "0" + month
} else {
    return month
}
return console.log(month + "/" + day + "/" + year)
}

Hopefully this question is helpful to a broader audience on how functions actually run.

EDIT: Thanks everyone, this makes a lot of sense. I really appreciate all your pedantic answers and perspective.

`return month` exits the function, returning month .. return console.log... will return undefined, as console.log returns undefined - so, remove the else block altogether, and return what you pass to console.log, rather than the value returned by console.log — Jaromanda X, Oct 30 '16 at 01:11
`return console.log(`…`)` doesn’t make sense. You `return` `month` alone in the `else` part. Why do you have this `else` part? — Sebastian Simon, Oct 30 '16 at 01:11
`it returns everything correct` - no, it returns undefined, but logs a message to the console — Jaromanda X, Oct 30 '16 at 01:14

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 30 '16 at 01:19

If the month is >= 10, then you return the month,

} else {
    return month
}

otherwise you return

return console.log(month + "/" + day + "/" + year)

returning console.log probably doesn't return anything

So of course your function is returning inconsistent things.

But I would also advise you to use the excellent momentjs

http://momentjs.com/docs/

It can do what you want in one line:

moment().format("DD/MM/YYYY");

It makes handling date and time easier and more consistent

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 30 '16 at 01:15

The else is unnecessary. Do it like this:

function todaydate() {
  var today = new Date();
  var month = today.getMonth() + 1;
  var day = today.getDate();
  var year = today.getFullYear();
  if (month < 10) {
    month = "0" + month
  }
  return month + "/" + day + "/" + year;
}

console.log(todaydate());

or like this:

 function todaydate() {
   var today = new Date();
   var month = today.getMonth() + 1;
   var day = today.getDate();
   var year = today.getFullYear();
   if (month < 10) {
     month = "0" + month
   }
   console.log(month + "/" + day + "/" + year);
 }

 todaydate();

Month/Day/Year Function Issue

2 Answers2