How are strings physically stored in Javascript

Question

What I am looking for is how strings are physically treated in Javascript. Best example I can think of for what I mean is that in the Java api it describes the storage of strings as:

String str = "abc";" is equivalent to: "char data[] = {'a', 'b', 'c'};

To me this says it uses an array object and stores each character as its own object to be used/accessed later (I am usually wrong on these things!)...

How does Javascript do this?

Answer 1

Strings are String objects in JavaScript. The String object can use the [] notation to get character from a string ("abc"[0] returns 'a'). You can also use the String.prototype.charAt function to achieve the same result.

Side node: var a = 'abc' and var b = new String('abc') are not the same. The first case is called a primitive string and get converted to a String object by the JavaScript parser. This results in other data types, calling typeof(a) gives you string but typeof(b) gives you object.