async/await implicitly returns promise?

Question

I read that async functions marked by the async keyword implicitly return a promise:

async function getVal(){
 return await doSomethingAync();
}         


        

Answer 1

I took a look at the spec and found the following information. The short version is that an async function desugars to a generator which yields Promises. So, yes, async functions return promises.

According to the tc39 spec, the following is true:

async function ?

Desugars to:

function ?{ return spawn(function*() , this); }

Where spawn "is a call to the following algorithm":

function spawn(genF, self) {
    return new Promise(function(resolve, reject) {
        var gen = genF.call(self);
        function step(nextF) {
            var next;
            try {
                next = nextF();
            } catch(e) {
                // finished with failure, reject the promise
                reject(e);
                return;
            }
            if(next.done) {
                // finished with success, resolve the promise
                resolve(next.value);
                return;
            }
            // not finished, chain off the yielded promise and `step` again
            Promise.resolve(next.value).then(function(v) {
                step(function() { return gen.next(v); });
            }, function(e) {
                step(function() { return gen.throw(e); });
            });
        }
        step(function() { return gen.next(undefined); });
    });
}