The read-only description
property is a string returning the optional description of Symbol
objects.
The source for this interactive example is stored in a GitHub repository. If you'd like to contribute to the interactive examples project, please clone https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples and send us a pull request.
Description
Symbol
objects can be created with an optional description which can be used for debugging but not to access the symbol itself. The Symbol.prototype.description
property can be used to read that description. It is different to Symbol.prototype.toString()
as it does not contain the enclosing "Symbol()
" string. See the examples.
Examples
Using description
Symbol('desc').toString(); // "Symbol(desc)" Symbol('desc').description; // "desc" Symbol('').description; // "" Symbol().description; // undefined // well-known symbols Symbol.iterator.toString(); // "Symbol(Symbol.iterator)" Symbol.iterator.description; // "Symbol.iterator" // global symbols Symbol.for('foo').toString(); // "Symbol(foo)" Symbol.for('foo').description; // "foo"
Specifications
Specification |
---|
ECMAScript (ECMA-262) The definition of 'get Symbol.prototype.description' in that specification. |
Browser compatibility
The compatibility table on this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.
Desktop | Mobile | Server | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
description | Chrome Full support 70 | Edge Full support 79 | Firefox Full support 63 | IE No support No | Opera Full support 57 | Safari
Full support
12.1
| WebView Android Full support 70 | Chrome Android Full support 70 | Firefox Android Full support 63 | Opera Android Full support 49 | Safari iOS
Full support
12.2
| Samsung Internet Android Full support 10.0 | nodejs Full support 11.0.0 |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support
- No support
- No support
- See implementation notes.
- See implementation notes.