Hash = Object;
Object = function () {return new Hash();}

/* And assuming Hash.prototype doesn’t change, then:
- Hash becomes something like the root of the heirarchy.
- {} and Object() return hashes (obviously). The prototype will be empty and this cannot be overridden.
- setting Object.prototype has no effect on new Objects or {}-literal objects.

To solve the instanceof problem:

For base classes, eg Array, if you do:
*/

Function.prototype.extends = function (func) {
this.prototype.__proto__ = func.prototype;
return this;
}
Array.extends(Object);

/* then instanceof works again:

i.e. [] instanceof Object == true;

You’d have to do this for the other ‘classes’ too, otherwise they will use the vanilla prototypes.

In addition to getting instanceof to work, overriding the Object.prototype WILL now affect arrays. So you can introduce new methods near the top of the ‘class’ hierarchy as well as iterating easily over Objects with for (i in obj) {…}. Best of both worlds.

I tested this in Firefox (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1) with Venkman version 0.9.87.2.
I also tested it in Safari 3.0.4. , but not in IE.

Lastly, if you want your own new base ‘class’ to start your own hierarchy, i.e. start with a blank slate, it couldn’t be easier, you do nothing special:

function MyObject() {};

Voila.

*/

But as far as I can see from post 56, unless any third party script you then include uses the unusual ({}).prototype.property = …

instead of the far more common

Object.prototype.property = …

to override the base class, it should still work. You basically make the root class {}.
Still the problems of inheritance testing remain (even though testing for inheritance from Object seems strange as it should always be true)

var BaseObject = Object;
Object = function () { return new BaseObject(); }

// what this does is separate the {} prototype from the Object prototype.
// However calling new Object() returns what you’d expect.

Object.prototype.x = 5;

var a = {a:1,b:2,c:3};
var s = ”;
for (i in a)
s+=a[i];

// s is now ‘123′, not ‘1235′
// I know there are other problems with this eg:

[] instanceof Object == false; // it used to be true.

// Can anyone suggest how can we deal with this?
// Mike Amy

Object.prototype.each = function(func, args) {
for (property in this) {
if (!(typeof(this))[property]) {
func(property, this[property], args);
}
}
};

var x = {a:”a”, b:”b”, c:”c”};
x.each(function(property, value) {
alert(’property name ‘+property+’, value: ‘+value);
});

Object.extend(String.prototype, {

trim: function(){
return this.replace(/^\s+|\s+$/g, ”);
}
});