Console.log showing only the updated version of the object printed

Question

String.prototype.width = function(font) {

  var f = font || '12px arial',
      o = $('<div>' + this + '</div>')
            .css({'position': 'absolute', 'float': 'left', 'white-space': 'nowrap', 'visibility': 'hidden', 'font': f})
            .appendTo($('body')),
      w = o.width();

  o.remove();

  return w;
}


function sortCustomFunction(a, b) {
  if (a['text'].width() < b['text'].width())
     return -1;
  if (a['text'].width() > b['text'].width())
     return 1;
  // a must be equal to b
  return 0;
}

var annoObj = {
        'anno' : [
            //an paikseis me auta (px to teleutaio na mpei prwto kok) oi mikres metatwpiseis ofeilontai sto padding.
            { "label" : "fifth" , "text"  : "This is a sample text another one" , 'color' : 'red' },
            { "label" : "first" , "text"  : "This is a sample" , 'color' : 'grey' },
            { "label" : "second" , "text" : "sample" , 'color' : 'green' },
            { "label" : "sixth" , "text"  : "This is a sample text another one text one mooooorreee" , 'color' : 'lightgreen' },
            { "label" : "third" , "text"  : "another one" , 'color' : 'blue' },
            { "label" : "forth" , "text"  : "one mooooorreee" , 'color' : 'purple' }        
        ]
    };

    console.log(annoObj.anno);   //This should print the unsorted array (but it prints the sorted array).
    annoObj.anno.sort(sortCustomFunction); //Sort the array
    console.log(annoObj.anno);  //This should print the sorted (and it does)

I'm doing the above and everything works fine. The array inside the json object is sorted by the width value of the 'text' key in the json elements of the array. What I noticed is this odd behavior in console.log. I'm printing the array before sorting and after sorting and in both prints it's the same. It prints the sorted array. Why is this?

JSFIDDLE

Answer 1

You have no problem with the sort but this is a well known peculiarity (an optimization) of most browser consoles : the tree is only built when you open the object, with the new values of the object.

If you want to see the state of the object at the time of logging, supposing it's a small enough and not self referencing object, you may clone it like this :

console.log(JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(annoObj.anno)));