CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptgoogle-chrome
Cong Hui
Cong Hui

Reputation: 633

Weirdest javaScript array literal

when I was on my project, I accidentally named a array "name" like this

var name = ["abc","abc","abc","abc"];

it generated an inconsistency in my project because as I expected name[0] would yield the first abc, HOWEVER!, it gives me the first letter a!!!. I tried this array in Firefox console and it always gave my the array instead of a String which I got from typing this into Chrome console. So I renamed the variable to be something else like this in Chrome again

var foo = ["abc","abc","abc","abc"];

And foo[0] gave me the first "abc". Feel free to try this, I am guessing there is a problem with the naming "name", but have no idea why. Thanks

Upvotes: 1

Views: 185

Answers (2)

Domenic
Domenic

Reputation: 112827

The Window object has a name property which is specified as follows:

The name attribute of the Window object must, on getting, return the current name of the browsing context, and, on setting, set the name of the browsing context to the new value.

(emphasis mine)

Thus, setting window.name, by e.g. doing var window = ... in a global context, will set the name of the browsing context to the right-hand side. Since the name must be a string, the setter converts it to one.

Upvotes: 2

Matthew Flaschen
Matthew Flaschen

Reputation: 284796

At the top level var name is the same as window.name.

window.name is reserved, so Chrome converts it to string implicitly.

Note that converting an array to a string just comma-separates it:

["abc","abc","abc","abc"].toString()

is:

"abc,abc,abc,abc"

Upvotes: 10

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