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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-08T09:34:17+00:00

In this answer, I instructed the questioner not to overwrite the native Object function

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In this answer, I instructed the questioner not to overwrite the native Object function in Javascript, because I thought that it would mess up the object creation process.

But then, I thought about it, and figured that it’s pretty unlikely that all objects are actually created using this function, along with the new keyword.

For example, is it used when objects are created with a literal notation (var a = {...})? Or does it simply do this = {}? Is it possible to actually assign values to this at all?

I saw this question, that is similar, and apparently Object behaves differently when used without the new keyword… How is the function actually implemented?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can overwrite Object in Chrome/V8 and bad things happen if you do. Typing the following gets these responses.

    > Object
 function Object() { [native code] }
> Number
 function Number() { [native code] }

    Looking at Number.prototype we can see a full set of methods and Object as Number’s prototype:

    Number
constructor: function Number() { [native code] }
toExponential: function toExponential() { [native code] }
toFixed: function toFixed() { [native code] }
toLocaleString: function toLocaleString() { [native code] }
toPrecision: function toPrecision() { [native code] }
toString: function toString() { [native code] }
valueOf: function valueOf() { [native code] }
__proto__: Object
  __defineGetter__: function __defineGetter__() { [native code] }
  __defineSetter__: function __defineSetter__() { [native code] }
  __lookupGetter__: function __lookupGetter__() { [native code] }
  __lookupSetter__: function __lookupSetter__() { [native code] }
  constructor: function Object() { [native code] }
  hasOwnProperty: function hasOwnProperty() { [native code] }
  isPrototypeOf: function isPrototypeOf() { [native code] }
  propertyIsEnumerable: function propertyIsEnumerable() { [native code] }
  toLocaleString: function toLocaleString() { [native code] }
  toString: function toString() { [native code] }
  valueOf: function valueOf() { [native code] }

    But if we overwrite Object

    Object = {}

    Number’s prototype goes a bit wonky:

    Number.prototype
   > Number

  ...empty...

    As Object is the root of the hierarchy there’s a bit of a paradox if you reassign it to another object.

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