History

This warning has existed in two forms across the three main linters. It was introduced in the original version of JSLint and has remained (in a way) in all three tools ever since.

• In JSLint and JSHint the warning given is "Read only"

• In ESLint the message has always been "{a} is a read-only native object"

The situations that produce the warning have not changed despite changes to the text of the warning itself.

When do I get this error?

The "Read only" error, and the alternative "{a} is a read-only native object", is thrown when JSLint, JSHint or ESLint encounters assign a value to built-in native object. In the following example we attempt to overwrite the native global String constructor function:

String = function () {
    "use strict";
    return "Overwritten";
};

Between April 2013 and August 2013 JSLint also produced this message when it encountered an assignment inside a catch block to the identifer associated with that block. This message was used instead of the older "Do not assign to the exception parameter" warning. Please see the page for that message for more details. The rest of this article will apply only to the above cause. In August 2013 this functionality was removed from JSLint:

try {
    // Some code that might throw an exception
    throw new Error();
} catch (e) {
    e = 10;
}

Why do I get this error?

This error is raised to highlight a potentially dangerous piece of code. Your code may work properly if you do not fix this error, but it may be confusing to others, especially at first glance to someone quickly searching through your script, and it may break third party scripts.

It is perfectly valid to overwrite any of the native built-in functions, but there are limited use cases for it. JSLint and JSHint both forbid this practice completely and do not provide an option to allow it. The list of objects treated as "read only" is as follows. Each item applies to all versions of JSLint, JSHint and ESLint unless noted otherwise:

• Array
• Boolean
• Date
• decodeURI
• decodeURIComponent
• encodeURI
• encodeURIComponent
• Error
• eval
• EvalError
• Function
• hasOwnProperty (JSHint only)
• Infinity (ESLint only)
• isFinite
• isNaN
• JSON
• Map (added to JSLint in September 2013 and to JSHint in version r11)
• Math
• NaN (added to JSHint in version r11, not in JSLint or ESLint)
• Number
• Object
• parseInt
• parseFloat
• Promise (added to JSLint in September 2013, not in JSHint or ESLint)
• Proxy (added to JSLint in September 2013, not in JSHint or ESLint)
• RangeError
• ReferenceError
• Reflect (added to JSLint in September 2013, not in JSHint or ESLint)
• RegExp
• Set (added to JSLint in September 2013 and to JSHint in version r11)
• String
• Symbol (added to JSLint in September 2013, not in JSHint or ESLint)
• SyntaxError
• System (added to JSLint in September 2013, not in JSHint or ESLint)
• TypeError
• undefined (ESLint only)
• URIError
• WeakMap (added to JSLint in September 2013 and to JSHint in version r11)
• WeakSet (added to JSLint in September 2013 and to JSHint in version r11)

In JSHint 1.0.0 and above you have the ability to ignore any warning with a special option syntax. The identifier of this warning is W020. This means you can tell JSHint to not issue this warning with the /*jshint -W020 */ directive.