What is the difference between any and unknown in TypeScript?

In TypeScript, any and unknown are types that allow working with any values, but there are important differences:

• any disables type checking. A variable of type any can be assigned anything, and any operations can be performed on it without compilation errors. This reduces type safety.

• unknown is a safer alternative to any. It can also hold any value, but before using the value, you need to perform a type check or cast it to the required type. The compiler will not allow direct use of an unknown type variable without checking.

Example:

let a: any = 10;
let u: unknown = 10;

let num1: number = a; // OK
// let num2: number = u; // Compilation error

if (typeof u === 'number') {
  let num2: number = u; // OK after check
}

Thus, unknown helps write safer code by forcing explicit type handling, whereas any is a "least resistance" path without type control.