Object.prototype returns empty object in Node

Question

While I execute Object.prototype in browser console, i am getting all the properties and methods available inside Object.prototype. This is as expected but when i am executing exactly the same thing in NodeJS terminal I am getting an empty object {}. Could anyone please explain me why its like this? I have attached screenshots of both.

Answer 1

It is because the console.log() in node use util.inspect(), which uses Object.keys() on objects, and it returns enumerable properties only. And Object.prototype contains non-enumerable properties, that is why it returns empty node.

Similar behavior can be observed in the below snippet, when we console.log(Object.prototype) it logs an empty {};

console.log(Object.prototype);

But when we explicitly define an enumerable property in Object.prototype it logs an object containing that property :

Object.defineProperty(Object.prototype, 'property1', {    value: 42,    enumerable : true  });  console.log(Object.prototype)

For Reference