I'm using the internationalization library l10n.js and it appears you cannot pass a value to the library to tell it what language you want to run translations on as it attempts to get the value from the clients browser; so I have been told if you actually want to set the locale you would need to do something like:

String.locale = 'en-GB';

In my case I am doing:

String.locale = $('html').attr('lang');

...right at the top of the file.

This works, however in PhpStorm I get the warning that:

Value assigned to this primitive will be lost

I checked this question out and understand why they got the warning, but am unsure in my instance - is it basically just telling me that the current value of String.locale will be lost?

I'm using the internationalization library l10n.js and it appears you cannot pass a value to the library to tell it what language you want to run translations on as it attempts to get the value from the clients browser; so I have been told if you actually want to set the locale you would need to do something like:

String.locale = 'en-GB';

In my case I am doing:

String.locale = $('html').attr('lang');

...right at the top of the file.

This works, however in PhpStorm I get the warning that:

Value assigned to this primitive will be lost

I checked this question out and understand why they got the warning, but am unsure in my instance - is it basically just telling me that the current value of String.locale will be lost?

• javascript
• phpstorm

• Could you give more context like how and where you set the String.locale? – Linek Commented Nov 26, 2016 at 13:27
• @Linek Updated. – Brett Commented Nov 26, 2016 at 13:31

3 Answers 3

It looks like a false alarm of the PhpStorm type inference system.

The String is not a primitive in JavaScript language. It is safe to assign a value to the property of the String here because of the String function is an object.

I suppose that the key idea of the Value assigned to this primitive will be lost could be described with the code:

> var primitive = "somestring";
> primitive.someprop = 3;
3
> primitive.someprop; 
undefined

In JavaScript there are 5 primitive types: undefined, null, boolean, string and number. Primitives are not objects and they have no properties. If JavaScript detects an attempt to assign a property to a primitive it will indeed coerce the primitive to an object. But this new object has no references and will immediately bee fodder for garbage collection. Therefore a value assigned to primitive will be lost. link

PHPStorm warns you about creating objects of String. Each of new instance will not contain locale variable as it's not declared in String.prototype. The code below should explain it.

var index = 1;
function test(value) {
	document.body.innerHTML += index++ + " " + value;
  document.body.innerHTML += "</br>";
}

test(String.locale); // 1 - check if locale exists

String.locale = "locale";
test(String.locale); // 2 - should return "locale"

String.prototype.locale = "other locale";
test(String.locale); // 3 - should strill return "locale"
test(String.prototype.locale); // 4 - should return "other locale"

test("".locale); // 5 - "other locale"
test(String("").locale); // 6 - "other locale"
test((new String("")).locale);  // 7 - "other locale"

String.locale = "locale";
test((new String("")).locale); // 8 - still "other locale", "locale" variable is not used when creating objects from "String" thus it's lost in all instances of this constructor

It's IDE specific behavior. It doesn't notify about custom objects.

EDIT After some research I understood I was wrong. It seems my answer wasn't related to the PHPStorm warning.

When you create a primitive variable and set it's property like so: primitive.locale = "en-GB" and try to access it by primitive.locale it will be undefined. That's what the warning is trying to tell you.

What I said about primitives still stand, PHPStorm notifies you only about Number, String, Boolean and null.

Check code below:

var someBoolean = true;
someBoolean.locale = "en-GB";
document.body.innerHTML += someBoolean.locale;

document.body.innerHTML += "</br>";

var someString = "test";
someString.locale = "en-GB"
document.body.innerHTML += someString.locale;

Or, as in my case, you can trigger this error like so:

const testObj = {};
testObj.name.first = 'jane';

It doesn't like the fact that the 'name' property has yet to be defined before we have started assigning stuff to it.