Eval() = Unexpected token : error

Question

I tried this simple JavaScript code:

eval(\'{\"Topics\":[\"toto\",\"tata\",\"titi\"]}\')

In the Chrome console, for example, this returns

Answer 1

Because eval does not force an expression context and the string provided is an invalid JavaScript program, thus the first three tokens (and how they are looked at) are:

{            // <-- beginning of a block, and NOT an Object literal
"Topics"     // <-- string value, okay (note this is NOT a label)
:            // <-- huh? expecting ";" or "}" or an operator, etc.

Happy coding.