Revealing Module Pattern And Scope

Question

I ran into an issue with some javascript I was running and broke it down to the code below. I'm confused as to why the _localVar variable doesn't change after init() is called. I find that if I reference this._localVar in the revealingModule, the results are as expected. I am confused about the scope. Could someone please clarify why this is occurring. I thought that if I didn't use this, then the next scope would be the module, but I don't think that's happening.

var myRevealingModule = (function () {
    var _localVar = "Default";

    function init() {
        console.log(_localVar);
        _localVar = "Init";
    }

    function getTest() {
        console.log(_localVar);
    }

    return {
        init: init,
        getTest: getTest,
        localVar: _localVar
    };
})();

myRevealingModule.getTest();               // "Default"
console.log(myRevealingModule.localVar);   // "Default"
myRevealingModule.init();                  // "Default"
myRevealingModule.getTest();               // "Init"
console.log(myRevealingModule.localVar);   // "Default"   * WHY *

Answer 1

myRevealingModule.localVar is not a reference to the variable's value; it simply copied the string when it's created.

When you use this.localVar, you're using the variable in the returned object. Hence, when you change that identifier, it also updates with myRevealingModule.localVar.

Answer 2

Note that your module uses a self-invoking function. Therefore the value of myRevealingModule.localVar is determined right after the definition and built-in invocation of myRevealingModule. At this time the value of _localVar is "Default", which is copied to returned object's localVar property. Even if you change _localVar afterwards this has no effect on myRevealingModule.localVar anymore.

Basically the following example show the same effect:

var a = 42;
var b = a;
console.log(a); // 42
console.log(b); // 42
a = 84;
console.log(a); // 84
console.log(b); // 42

b copies the value of a. If you change a afterwards that has no impact on b.