Why does instanceof return false for some literals?

Primitives are a different kind of type than objects created from within Javascript. From the Mozilla API docs:

var color1 = new String("green");
color1 instanceof String; // returns true
var color2 = "coral";
color2 instanceof String; // returns false (color2 is not a String object)

I can't find any way to construct primitive types with code, perhaps it's not possible. This is probably why people use typeof "foo" === "string" instead of instanceof.

An easy way to remember things like this is asking yourself "I wonder what would be sane and easy to learn"? Whatever the answer is, Javascript does the other thing.

I use:

function isString(s) {
    return typeof(s) === 'string' || s instanceof String;
}

Because in JavaScript strings can be literals or objects.