I am watching fCC’s new Javascript Games video course and am on the first game, a memory game. I am confused at what this line of code means.
cardArray.sort(() => 0.5 - Math.random())
This looks like it (weakly) shuffles the elements in cardArray.
Here’s the MDN page about the sort method’s callback function.
The sort function goes through the array in order, looking at pairs of elements.
When the callback returns a positive number, that pair of elements are swapped.
Otherwise, they stay where they are.
() => 0.5 - Math.random()
This function is simply creating a random chance of getting a positive or negative number, because Math.random() returns a number from 0 (inclusive) to 1 (exclusive). Half the time, it will evaluate to a negative number, and half the time it will evaluate to a positive number.
In terms of how that works with sort, half the time the elements will be swapped, and half of the time they won’t.