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Chapter 5: Reference Types
Chapter 5
Reference Types
WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?
- Working with objects
- Creating and manipulating arrays
- Understanding basic JavaScript data types
- Working with primitives and primitive wrappers
A reference value (object) is an instance of a specific reference type. In ECMAScript, reference types are structures used to group data and functionality together and are often incorrectly called classes. Although technically an object-oriented language, ECMAScript lacks some basic constructs that have traditionally been associated with object-oriented programming, including classes and interfaces. Reference types are also sometimes called object definitions, because they describe the properties and methods that objects should have.
Even though reference types are similar to classes, the two concepts are not equivalent. To avoid any confusion, the term class is not used in the rest of this book.
