Prototyping Object in Javascript breaks jQuery?
javascript, jquery, prototype, prototyping
Solution
You should never extend `Object.prototype`. It does far more than break jQuery; it completely breaks the "object-as-hashtables" feature of Javascript. Don't do it.
You can ask John Resig, and he'll tell you the same thing.
Problem
I have added a simple `.js` file to my page that has some pretty mundane common-task sort of functions added to the `Object` and `Array` prototypes. Through trial and error, I've figured out that adding any function to `Object.prototype`, no matter it's name or what it does causes Javascript errors in jQuery: The culprit? ``` Object.prototype.foo = function() { /*do nothing and break jQuery*/ }; ``` The error I'm getting line 1056 of `jquery-1.3.2.js`, in the attr:function { } declaration: ``` /*Object doesn't support this property or method*/ name = name.replace(/-([a-z])/ig, function(all, letter) { return letter.toUpperCase(); }); ``` Apparently G.replace is undefined. While it's obvious that there's something I'm just not wrapping my head around with prototyping, I'm failing miserably to figure out what it is. To be clear, I'm not looking for a workaround, I have that handled... what I'm looking for is an answer to Why?. Why does adding a function to `Object.prototype` break this bit of code?