suppose I do..
var arr = Array();
var i = 3333;
arr[i] = "something";
if you do a stringify of this array it will return a string with a whole bunch of undefined numeric entries for those entries whose index is less than 3333...
is there a way to make javascript not do this?
I know that I can use an object {} but I would rather not since I want to do array operations such as shift() etc which are not available for objects
If you create an array per the OP, it only has one member with a property name of "333" and a length of 334 because length is always set to be at least one greater than the highest index. e.g.
var a = new Array(1000);
has a length of 1000 and no members,
var a = [];
var a[999] = 'foo';
has a length of 1000 and one member with a property name of "999".
The speedy way to only get defined members is to use for..in:
function myStringifyArray(a) {
var s = [];
var re = /^\d+$/;
for (var p in a) {
if (a.hasOwnProperty(p) && re.test(p)) {
s.push(a[p]);
}
}
return '' + s;
}
Note that the members may be returned out of order. If that is an issue, you can use a for loop instead, but it will be slower for very sparse arrays:
function myStringifyArray(a) {
var s = [];
var re = /^\d+$/;
for (var i=0, iLen=a.length; i<iLen; i++) {
if (a.hasOwnProperty(i)) {
s.push(a[i]);
}
}
return '' + s;
}
In some older browsers, iterating over the array actually created the missing members, but I don't think that's in issue in modern browsers.
Please test the above thoroughly.
The literal representation of an array has to have all the items of the array, otherwise the 3334th item would not end up at index 3333.
You can replace all undefined values in the array with something else that you want to use as empty items:
for (var i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
if (typeof arr[i] == 'undefined') arr[i] = '';
}
Another alternative would be to build your own stringify method, that would create assignments instead of an array literal. I.e. instead of a format like this:
[0,undefined,undefined,undefined,4,undefined,6,7,undefined,9]
your method would create something like:
(function(){
var result = [];
result[0] = 0;
result[4] = 4;
result[6] = 6;
result[7] = 7;
result[9] = 9;
return result;
}())
However, a format like that is of course not compatible with JSON, if that is what you need.
0,,,,4,,6,7,,9 which (not surprisingly) is what Array.prototype.toString returns.
callthe relevant Array prototype methods.JSON.stringify(arr.filter(function(i,v){return typeof v !== "undefined"}))