Implementation of String object as an exercise

Question

I am reading "Object-Oriented JavaScript" by Stoyan Stefanov to learn JavaScript and in the end of the chapter named "Objects", there's an exercise that asks you to implement your own String object. I have implemented some methods of String (not all), I'd be happy if you could check and let me know how it could be done better:

function MyString(primitive) {
    this.length = 0;
    var i = 0;
    // Here length is calculated and the indexer is set.
    for (var c in primitive) {
        this[i++] = primitive[c];
        this.length++;
    }

    this.toString = function() { return primitive; };
    this.valueOf = this.toString;
    this.substring = function(start, end) {
        var result = '';

        // Edge cases for the parameters.
        if ((typeof end !== 'number' && typeof parseInt(end) !== 'number') || end > this.length)
            end = this.length;
        if (end <= 0 || isNaN(end)) {
            end = start;
            start = 0;
        }

        for (var i = start; i < end; i++) {
            result += this[i];
        }

        return result;
    }
    this.charAt = function(i) {
        var x = parseInt(i);
        x = isNaN(x) ? 0 : x;
        return this.substring(x, x+1);
    };

    return this;
}

var s = new MyString('hello');
console.log(s.length);
console.log(s[0]);
console.log(s.toString());
console.log(s.valueOf());
console.log(s.charAt(1));
console.log(s.charAt('2'));
console.log(s.charAt('e'));
console.log(s.substring(1, 3));

Any and all suggestions are welcome. I'm completely new to JavaScript and would love to hear my mistakes.

Answer 1

Some information up front:

1. Object.defineProperty is an Ecmascript 5 feature, and is not available in older browsers (IE < 9).

2. There is likely a cleaner way of doing all of this.

This is a basic skeleton:

function MyString(primitive) {
    var length = 0, a;   // private internal variable to track length, and our iterator

    // the loop below basically ensures that this string object is immutable. 
    for(a in primitive){
        (function(char){
            Object.defineProperty(this, length++, {
                get:function(){return char;}
            });
        }).call(this,primitive[a]);
    }

    // we can "get" the length, but we can't "set" it.
    Object.defineProperty(this, "length", {
        get:function(){return length;}
    });

    return this;
}

// defining methods on the prototype of an object allows us to share the same instance 
// of the method without recreating it for each instance of the object. 
// (reduced memory footprint)
MyString.prototype.toString = function(){
    return [].join.call(this, '');  
    // since our object is "array-like", we can use array methods on it. 
}

MyString.prototype.charAt = function(index){
    return this[index];
}