i) what is the difference between these two objects
The simple answer is that [object]
indicates a host object that has no internal class. A host object is an object that is not part of the ECMAScript implementation you're working with, but is provided by the host as an extension. The DOM is a common example of host objects, although in most newer implementations DOM objects inherit from the native Object and have internal class names (such as HTMLElement, Window, etc). IE's proprietary ActiveXObject is another example of a host object.
[object]
is most commonly seen when alerting DOM objects in Internet Explorer 7 and lower, since they are host objects that have no internal class name.
ii) what type of Object is this
You can get the "type" (internal class) of object using Object.prototype.toString
. The specification requires that it always returns a string in the format [object [[Class]]]
, where [[Class]]
is the internal class name such as Object, Array, Date, RegExp, etc. You can apply this method to any object (including host objects), using
Object.prototype.toString.apply(obj);
Many isArray
implementations use this technique to discover whether an object is actually an array (although it's not as robust in IE as it is in other browsers).
iii) what all properties does this object contains and values of each property
In ECMAScript 3, you can iterate over enumerable properties using a for...in
loop. Note that most built-in properties are non-enumerable. The same is true of some host objects. In ECMAScript 5, you can get an array containing the names of all non-inherited properties using Object.getOwnPropertyNames(obj)
. This array will contain non-enumerable and enumerable property names.