Question

I have a variable when i write its value using document.write() i don’t get the true value. See this-

 <div onclick="a=this;document.write(a)">this is div</div>

With this by clicking div i get this[object HTMLDivElement]. But this not the true value see how-

 <button onclick="[object HTMLDivElement].style.visibility='hidden'">click me</button>

when i used this code. I expected that it will hide all div elements. But i didn’t got that. Why?

Note:-

i don’t want a better way to do this, i want to know the problem in my code.

Answer 1

Passing an object to document.write will convert the object to a string by calling .toString().

When called on a <div> DOM element, toString() returns "[object HTMLDivElement]".

This is just a string representation of the object; it is fundamentally impossible to retrieve the original object from that string.