• Victor
    link
    fedilink
    38
    edit-2
    9 days ago

    In node, I get the same result in both cases. "[object Object]"

    It’s calling the toString() method on both of them, which in the array case is the same as calling .join(",") on the array. For an empty array, that results in an empty string added to "[object Object]" at either end in the respective case in the picture.

    Not sure how we’d get 0 though. Anybody know an implementation that does that? Browsers do that maybe? Which way is spec compliant? Number([]) is 0, and I think maybe it’s in the spec that the algorithm for type coercion includes an initial attempt to convert to Number before falling back to toString()? I dunno, this is all off the top of my head.

    • @PoolloverNathan@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      43
      edit-2
      9 days ago

      The inspector REPL evaluates as a statement-with-value (like eval), so the {} at the beginning is considered an empty block, not an object. This leaves +[], which is 0. I don’t know what would make Node differ, however.

      Edit: Tested it myself. It seems Node prefers evaluating this as an expression when it can, but explicitly using eval gives the inspector behavior:

      • Victor
        link
        fedilink
        209 days ago

        So there’s yet another level of quirkery to this bullshit then, it seems. 😆 Nice digging! 🤝

        I also noticed that if you surround the curlies with parentheses, you get the same again:

        > eval('{} + []')
        0
        > eval('({}) + []')
        '[object Object]'
        
          • Victor
            link
            fedilink
            1
            edit-2
            8 days ago

            I thought IIFE’s usually looked like (function (...params) {})(...args). That’s not the latest way? To be honest I never used them much, at least not after arrow functions arrived.