JavaScript’s built-in objects do provide hashtable functionality using
the square brackets notation for properties, provided your keys are
strings or numbers
That seems to be incorrect – object keys may be strings or (since ECMAScript 2015, aka ECMA-262 ed 6) symbols. But that is a different topic to square bracket property access.
See ECMA-262 ed 3 ยง 11.2.1 (Please also see ECMAScript 2017 (draft).):
Properties are accessed by name, using either the dot notation:
MemberExpression . IdentifierName
CallExpression . IdentifierName
or the bracket notation:
MemberExpression [ Expression ]
CallExpression [ Expression ]
The dot notation is explained by the following syntactic conversion:
MemberExpression . IdentifierName
is identical in its behaviour to
MemberExpression [ <identifier-name-string> ]
and similarly
CallExpression . IdentifierName
is identical in its behaviour to
CallExpression [ <identifier-name-string> ]
where <identifier-name-string> is a string literal containing the
same sequence of characters after processing of Unicode escape
sequences as the IdentifierName.
So when using dot notation, the bit after the dot must fit the criteria for an IdentifierName. But when using square brackets, an expression is provided that is evaluated and resolved to a string.
Briefly, square bracket notation is provided so that properties can be accessed using an expression, e.g.
var y = {};
var x = 'foo';
y[x] = 'foo value';
In the above, x is provided in square brackets so it is evaluated, returning the string ‘foo’. Since this property doesn’t exist on y yet, it is added. The foo property of y is then assigned a value of ‘foo value’.
In general terms, the expression in the square brackets is evaluated and its toString() method called. It is that value that is used as the property name.
In the dot property access method, the identifier is not evaluated, so:
y.bar="bar value";
creates a property bar with a value bar value.
If you want to create a numeric property, then:
y[5] = 5;
will evaluate 5, see it’s not a string, call (more or less) Number(5).toString() which returns the string 5, which is used for the property name. It is then assigned the value 5, which is a number.
This answer was written when ECMAScript ed3 was current, however things have moved on. Please see later references and MDN.