Question

I was under the impression that strings have properties, such as match. Why does console.dir('') claim that '' has no properties (at least in Google Chrome)?

Answer 1

It’s because '' is a string literal, not an instance of the String “class”. As properties like match are declared on String.prototype, you won’t see them when using a string literal. If you use the new operator you will see what you expected:

var s = new String("hello");
console.dir(s);

Here’s a screenshot from Chrome’s developer tools (notice the need to expand the prototype, as the method you’re expecting to see is declared on the prototype, not the String object itself):