this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
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Everything that's an
Object
is going to either inheritObject.prototype.toString()
(mdn) or provide its own implementation. Like I said in another comment, even functions have atoString()
because they're also objects.A
String
is anObject
, so it's going to have atoString()
method. It doesn't inheritObject
's implementation, but provides one that's sort of a no-op / identity function but not quite.So, the thing is that when you say
const someString = "test string"
, you're not actually creating a newString
object instance and assigning it tosomeString
, you're creating astring
(lowercases
!) primitive and assigning it tosomeString
:Compare this with creating a
new String("bla")
:In Javascript, primitives don't actually have any properties or methods, so when you call
someString.toString()
(or call any other method or access any property onsomeString
), what happens is thatsomeString
is coerced into aString
instance, and thentoString()
is called on that. Essentially it's like goingnew String(someString).toString()
.Now, what
String.prototype.toString()
(mdn) does is it returns the underlyingstring
primitive and not theString
instance itself:Why? Fuckin beats me, I honestly can't remember what the point of returning the primitive instead of the
String
instance is because I haven't been elbow-deep in Javascript in years, but regardless this is whatString
'stoString()
does. Probably has something to do with coercion logic.