Console log ({value}) isn't the same as console.log(value)

Question

I'm not stuck or anything, it's just my own curiosity and I noticed something about Console.log, And I can't find anwsers online, or its limited since I think making a Google search with "{}" isn't really working out

I'm coding a small node.Js app that interacts with Wi-Fi, and I tried the following thing:

console.log(ssid +  " : " + pwd);

and it returns this

freebox_XXXXX : fake_password

So far, everything is normal but then, I was tired and messed up and tried this:

console.log({ ssid: ssid, password: pwd });

and it returned this

 {
  ssid: 'f\x00r\x00e\x00e\x00b\x00o\x00x\x00_\x005\x007\x00a\x002\x00a\x007\x00',
  password: '\x00T\x00e\x00s\x00t\x00'
 }

I'm wondering why do you have any answers?

More details:

The data sent via bluetooth by this function as an bufferArray is created with this function

str2ab(str) {
    let buf = new ArrayBuffer(str.length * 2); // 2 bytes for each char
    let bufView = new Uint16Array(buf);
    for (let i = 0, strLen = str.length; i < strLen; i++) {
      bufView[i] = str.charCodeAt(i);
    }
    return buf;
  }
let payload = str2ab('freebox_XXXXX|' + alertData.password);

Then, the other devices receives it

WriteOnlyCharacteristic.prototype.onWriteRequest = function(data, offset, withoutResponse, callback) {
    let payload = data.toString()

    let wifiData = payload.split('|');

    let ssid = wifiData[0];
    let pwd = wifiData[1];
    console.log(ssid +  " : " + pwd);
    console.log({ ssid: ssid, password: pwd });

   });

Answer 1

The difference is because of how Node.js logs values.

The behaviour of console.log() depends on the type of values being logged:

• If a string is logged, it is written to stdout as-is (well, not as-is, because % -args are substituted, but that's off-topic for this question), to allow raw texts (optionally with escape sentences) to be displayed in the console
• If another data type is passed, it will be inspected (intended for debugging, the same way as util.inspect() does it), that is, it will be converted to a format nearly identical to the JS syntax that created it. That makes the strings inside complex data structures displayed as their representation: with quotes around them and special characters escaped.

Your strings contain NULL characters between each letter (that's probably because your code treats a UTF-16 string as UTF-8 or ASCII somewhere), which don't appear when logged to the console, but show up escaped ( \x00 ) when the string is inspected.

That is the cause of the inconsistency between the two logging methods.

Answer 2

{ ssid: ssid, password: pwd }

It is a object not string.