Is there any point in using an 'enum' type instead of a string in Javascript?

Question

Coming from a background in statically typed languages, the main benefit I get from enums is compile time error catching.

I'm writing a little program in Javascript, and I find myself wanting something like an enum, perhaps like this:

var Fruit = {
   BANANA: "BANANA",
   APPLE: "APPLE",
   PEAR: "PEAR";
};

But I see no advantage to this. I might as well just use strings everywhere this 'enum' is required.

Should I just be using strings in javascript in place of enum types in other languages?

Answer 1

It is good way to extract common things like magic numbers/strings or similar. Imagine that you have BANANA all over the place then for some reason you need to change BANANA to SOMETHING_ELSE, without approach you are using in question you need to make a change in every single place.

var foo = {
  bar: "baz"
}

So using foo.bar instead of hardcoded string "baz" all over the place, can save your time and possible bugs when it comes to changing "baz" to something else.