Thank you @St3f4n i understand it now i'm a beginner in JS thats why it seems weird for me.

It's shorthand for Number(), so it's just a simple converting to a number.

can somebody explain to me why in the code there is the plus sign in the beggining of the code in my code i used parseFloat but this plus in the beggining i didnt understand .

It should be expressly advised that the second method can take either 1 or 2 total arguments. Other than that, awesome!

ah!! i was under the impression that every test would return either a pass or fail -- didn't realize mine errored out (BEFORE returning a boolean) for trying to compare null to a integer! my apologies :)

PS - @arnedag -- that console.log trick definitely helps my troubleshooting a ton... i can't believe i hadn't been doing this. Thanks for the valuable lesson!

I just accounted for Julian's testcase and added a test for it myself:

Test.assertEquals(validParentheses( "()))((()" ), false);

aand my solution passes this test.

BUT when i submit my solution, the output shows 8 passed tests, but still fails me :( Am i missing something?

Just wanted to point out that when i submit my solution, the attempt fails although the output shows 3 different tests as passed/green. There is no failed test or other indication of why my solution failed...

Not sure if this is expected behavior, but i feel like if a solution fails, there should some feedback as to why in the output (although i know why mine failed -- i haven't accounted for Julian's testcase above).

ah looks like it's way easier than i first thought. i think i'm getting the hang of it, thanks!

bookmarked -- definitely helped me wrap my head around the basics! thanks :)

ugh... having a hell of a time picking up regexps... could someone walk me through this please?

Ditto. i really feel like this kata could use a bit more descriptiveness. I've passed the first two tests but fail on the 3rd with the same error warning as aleation. Thing is, i can't tell why it's failing cuz i don't know what the test is.

The intention of the site, and all kata, are to help users develop good programming skills and habits -- to "achieve code mastery" as the tagline says.

While this solution fulfills the premise, i don't see it promoting any sort of beneficial programming methodology. It's a shortcut and isn't robust by any means.

That said, if this was the author's intent, then kudos, BattleRoyale. Otherwise, i think tests should be added to disallow this type of solution.