Understanding the prototype created from a `new` instance

Question

From the new MDN docs it says:

The new keyword does the following things:

1. Creates a blank, plain JavaScript object.
2. Adds a property to the new object (__proto__) that links to the constructor function's prototype object

How exactly is the prototype defined then? My thought was it would be:

• If it's in a function (not using the class keyword), it would lookup to find if there is a [Constructor].prototype declared somewhere and use that, and if not it would fallback to...(not sure?). As an example if the constructor is named Range it would lookup to see if Range.prototype is defined and use that as the prototype.
• If it's in a class then it would use every method or property to build the prototype up.

Is that more-or-less a correct understanding, or what might I be missing?

Answer 1

No matter whether the constructor is declared with class syntax or as a function, the <constructor.prototype> object will always exist, even if never explicitly referred to. Example:

function FooFn() {}
class FooClass{}

console.log(FooFn.prototype);
console.log(FooClass.prototype);

These .prototype objects are plain objects which become the internal prototype of instances created with new. They also have a .constructor property pointing to the constructor (the function / class used to create an instance).

So it's not exactly that

it would lookup to find if there is a [Constructor].prototype declared somewhere and use that

but rather that such a property always exists on functions and classes, and when an instance is created with new, the object inside the .prototype property becomes the internal prototype of the instance.

If it's in a class then it would use every method or property to build the prototype up.

Not exactly - a class is mostly just syntactic sugar for a function. What this does:

class Foo {
  method() {
    console.log();
  }
}

is almost exactly (but not entirely) the same as

function Foo() {}
Foo.prototype = function method() {
  console.log();
}

The methods are assigned to the class's .prototype object when the class declaration happens, not when an instance is created.

class X {
  xMethod() {
  }
}

console.log(X.prototype);
console.log(X.prototype.hasOwnProperty('xMethod'));
console.log(X.prototype === (new X).__proto__);