Why are methods of String.prototype available to string literals?

Question

This question has come out of another, which concerns the behaviour of console.dir with string literals. In particular, see the comments on my answer.

A

Answer 1

That's exactly what it's doing.

Javascript boxes primitive types as needed.

Here's some more information:

http://princepthomas.blogspot.com/2011/07/auto-boxing-javascript-primitive-types.html