JavaScript quirks – Objects by reference

I recently started developing with NodeJS and noticed something peculiar:

var a = {"test": "moo"}; // Define an object
var b = a; // Copy the object
b.test = "meh";
alert(a.test); // alert: "meh"
// wait- what? b = a makes a reference instead of a copy, doh!

One way to get around this is:

var b = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(a)) // This is one ugly hack

but it feels.. wrong.. and probably doesn’t work with nested functions and stuff like that.

Related posts:

1. Was man mit JavaScript alles machen kann..