JavaScript: why array.push() appends two objects instead of one

Question

I am quite new to JS and there is a problem with my code that I really don't understand: I try to append a text-value pair to an array and basically it works, but instead of appending a single pair, it appends two pairs. Below is the code snippet and the problem is in the latter if-statement. I have added comments on to the snippet to explain what I am doing.

 players.addResult = function(result){

 //result-argument contains results of games, like: Object {0: "4-2", 1: "5-3", 2: "7-1"}


    var playerList = [];        
    var standingArray = [];

    resultLen = Object.keys(result).length;

    //loop iterates thru results by index
    for (var x=0; x < resultLen; x++) {
        var newResult = result[x];
        newResult = newResult.split("-");

        if (newResult[0] > newResult[1]) {

            //the next line retrieves the name of a winning player from another array
            playerVal = players.pairs[x].player1;
            playerVal = playerVal.text;
            console.log(playerVal); //Output of this: Bill
            value = playerList.indexOf(playerVal); // Checks if the player already exists on the standings, returns -1 if false.

            if (value === -1) {

          /*if the player gets his first points, his name and earned
          points are added on to the standingArray. And the next line of code is the
          interesting one, because I am expecting to have an array with
          index, name of the winner and points. Like this: 
          Object 0 name:"Bill" points:2. But  instead of that, there are two                 
          objects on the array, one for both players: 
          [Object]
           0: Object
             name:  "Bill"
             points: 2
             __proto__: Object
           1: Object
             name: "Greg"
             points: 2
             __proto__: Object
          length: 2
          __proto__: Array[0]*/

                standingArray.push({name: playerVal, points: 2})

                playerList.push(playerVal); //this is for keeping on track that player is now on the standingArray

                console.log(playerVal);
                console.log(playerList);
                console.log(standingArray);
            }
            else {
                console.log("else");
            }               
        console.log(playerList);
        console.log(standingArray);

So the question is that how JS gets Greg's name - I have checked the playerVal-variable and it really contains only Bill's name. Any help is warmly welcome!

Answer 1

The output that appears in the console from console.log is alive. It reflects changes to the objects passed to console.log after the console.log call has occurred.

You might want to JSON.stringify before passing the object to console.log or make a copy of the Array:

console.log(playerList.slice());
console.log(standingArray.slice());