Why does this aysnc function not implicitly return a promise?

Question

I read in this Stack Overflow question async/await implicitly returns promise? that:

"An Async function will always return a promise. If you don't explicitly return a promise, the value you return will automatically be wrapped in a promise."

So why does my getData2() function below return undefined?

const getData = async() => {
  return new Promise(resolve => {
    setTimeout(() => {
      resolve('this is the data');
    }, 2000);
  });
};

const getData2 = async() => {
  setTimeout(() => {
    return 'this is the data without an explicit promise';
  }, 1000);
};

(async() => {
  console.log(await getData2()); // DOES NOT WORK: displays 'undefined' immediately
  console.log(await getData()); // WORKS: waits one second and displays data
})();

Answer 1

getData2 is returning a Promise, but you're awaiting it, which extracts the resolve value from the Promise.

console.log(await getData2());

turns into

console.log(await promiseThatResolvesToUndefined);

console.log(undefined);

If you don't await it, you'll see the Promise.

const getData2 = async () => {
    setTimeout(() => {
        return 'this is the data without an explicit promise';
    }, 1000);
};

(async () => {
    console.log(getData2());
})();

The resolve value is undefined because nothing is being returned inside the body of getData2.