A and B reference the same object, so A.a and B.a reference the same property of the same object.
Here's a "copy" function that may do the job, it can do both shallow and deep clones. Note the caveats. It copies all enumerable properties of an object (not inherited properties), including those with falsey values (I don't understand why other approaches ignore them), it also doesn't copy non–existent properties of sparse arrays.
There is no general copy or clone function because there are many different ideas on what a copy or clone should do in every case. Most rule out host objects, or anything other than Objects or Arrays. This one also copies primitives. What should happen with functions?
So have a look at the following, it's a slightly different approach to others.
/* Only works for native objects, host objects are not
** included. Copies Objects, Arrays, Functions and primitives.
** Any other type of object (Number, String, etc.) will likely give
** unexpected results, e.g. copy(new Number(5)) ==> 0 since the value
** is stored in a non-enumerable property.
**
** Expects that objects have a properly set *constructor* property.
*/
function copy(source, deep) {
var o, prop, type;
if (typeof source != 'object' || source === null) {
// What do to with functions, throw an error?
o = source;
return o;
}
o = new source.constructor();
for (prop in source) {
if (source.hasOwnProperty(prop)) {
type = typeof source[prop];
if (deep && type == 'object' && source[prop] !== null) {
o[prop] = copy(source[prop]);
} else {
o[prop] = source[prop];
}
}
}
return o;
}