How to initialize an array s length in JavaScript

Question

Most of the tutorials that I ve read on arrays in JavaScript  including w3schools and devguru  suggest that you can initialize an array with a certain length by passing an integer to the Array constructor using the var test   new Array 4   syntax   After using this syntax liberally in my js files  I ran one of the files through jsLint  and it freaked out      Error  Problem at line 1 character 22  Expected     and instead saw  4     var test   new Array 4     Problem at line 1 character 23  Expected     and instead saw        var test   new Array 4     Problem at line 1 character 23  Expected an identifier and instead saw        After reading through jsLint s explanation of its behavior  it looks like jsLint doesn t really like the new Array   syntax  and instead prefers    when declaring arrays   So I have a couple questions   First  why   Am I running any risk by using the new Array   syntax instead   Are there browser incompatibilities that I should be aware of   And second  if I switch to the square bracket syntax  is there any way to declare an array and set its length all on one line  or do I have to do something like this   var test       test length   4

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var arr     arr 5  0  alert  length   arr length      gives 6

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You can set the array length by using array length   youValue  So it would be  var myArray       myArray length   yourValue

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Why do you want to initialize the length  Theoretically there is no need for this  It can even result in confusing behavior  because all tests that use the length to find out whether an array is empty or not will report that the array is not empty  Some tests show that setting the initial length of large arrays can be more efficient if the array is filled afterwards  but the performance gain  if any  seem to differ from browser to browser  jsLint does not like new Array   because the constructer is ambiguous   new Array 4     creates an empty array of length 4  But  new Array  4      creates an array containing the value  4     Regarding your comment  In JS you don t need to initialize the length of the array  It grows dynamically  You can just store the length in some variable  e g   var data       var length   5     user defined length  for var i   0  i  lt  length  i          data push createSomeObject

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Please people don t give up your old habits just yet  There is a large difference in speed between allocating memory once then working with the entries in that array  as of old   and allocating it many times as an array grows  which is inevitably what the system does under the hood with other suggested methods    None of this matters of course  until you want to do something cool with larger arrays  Then it does   Seeing as there still seems to be no option in JS at the moment to set the initial capacity of an array  I use the following     var newArrayWithSize   function size      this standard   this standard        for  var add   size-this standard length  add gt 0  add--       this standard push undefined     or whatever       return this standard slice 0 size       There are tradeoffs involved    This method takes as long as the others for the first call to the function  but very little time for later calls  unless asking for a bigger array   The standard array does permanently reserve as much space as the largest array you have asked for    But if it fits with what you re doing there can be a payoff  Informal timing puts  for  var n 10000 n gt 0 n--   var b   newArrayWithSize 10000  b 0  0     at pretty speedy  about 50ms for the 10000 given that with n 1000000 it took about 5 seconds   and  for  var n 10000 n gt 0 n--      var b      for  var add 10000 add gt 0 add--        b push undefined           at well over a minute  about 90 sec for the 10000 on the same chrome console  or about 2000 times slower   That won t just be the allocation  but also the 10000 pushes  for loop  etc

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In most answers it is recommended to fill the array because otherwise  you can t iterate over it   but this is not true  You can iterate an empty array  just not with forEach  While loops  for of loops and for i loops work fine    const count   Array 5     Does not work   console log  ---for each loop ---    count forEach  empty  index    gt        console log  counting   index           These work   console log  ---for of loop ---    for  let  index  empty  of count entries        console log  counting for of loop   index        console log  ---for i loop ---    for  let i   0  il   count length  i  lt  il    i      console log  counting for i loop   i        console log  ---while loop ---    let index   0  while  index  lt  count length       console log  counting while loop   index        index         Check this fiddle with the above examples   Also angulars  ngFor works fine with an empty array    lt li  ngFor  let empty of count  let i   index   ngClass       lt span gt Counting with  ngFor   i   lt  span gt   lt  li gt

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The array constructor has an ambiguous syntax  and JSLint just hurts your feelings after all   Also  your example code is broken  the second var statement will raise a SyntaxError  You re setting the property length of the array test  so there s no need for another var   As far as your options go  array length is the only  clean  one  Question is  why do you need to set the size in the first place  Try to refactor your code to get rid of that dependency

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Array 5  gives you an array with length 5 but no values  hence you can t iterate over it  Array apply null  Array 5   map function        gives you an array with length 5 and undefined as values  now it can be iterated over  Array apply null  Array 5   map function  x  i    return i     gives you an array with length 5 and values 0 1 2 3 4  Array 5  forEach alert  does nothing  Array apply null  Array 5   forEach alert  gives you 5 alerts ES6 gives us Array from so now you can also use Array from Array 5   forEach alert  If you want to initialize with a certain value  these are good to knows    Array from  abcde    Array from  x  repeat 5   or Array from  length  5    v  i    gt  i       gives  0  1  2  3  4

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The shortest   x000D   x000D  let arr       Array 10    console log arr   x000D   x000D   x000D

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The reason you shouldn t use new Array is demonstrated by this code   var Array   function         var x   new Array 4    alert x length       undefined      Some other code could mess with the Array variable  I know it s a bit far fetched that anyone would write such code  but still     Also  as Felix King said  the interface is a little inconsistent  and could lead to some very difficult-to-track-down bugs   If you wanted an array with length   x  filled with undefined  as new Array x  would do   you could do this   var x   4  var myArray       myArray x - 1    undefined   alert myArray length      4

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Here is another solution   var arr   Array apply  null    length  4      arr       undefined  undefined  undefined  undefined   in Chrome  arr length     4   The first argument of apply   is a this object binding  which we don t care about here  so we set it to null    Array apply     is calling the Array     function and spreading out the   length  3   object value as its arguments

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This will initialize the length property to 4   var x

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this was probably better as a comment  but got too long   So  after reading this I was curious if pre-allocating was actually faster  because in theory it should be  However  this blog gave some tips advising against it http   www html5rocks com en tutorials speed v8    So still being unsure  I put it to the test  And as it turns out it seems to in fact be slower   var time   Date now    var temp       for var i 0 i lt 100000 i         temp i  i    console log Date now  -time     var time   Date now    var temp2   new Array 100000   for var i 0 i lt 100000 i         temp2 i    i    console log Date now  -time      This code yields the following after a few casual runs     node main js  9 16   node main js  8 14   node main js  7 20   node main js  9 14   node main js  9 19

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With ES2015  fill   you can now simply do       n  is the size you want to initialize your array     0  is what the array will be filled with  can be any other value  Array n  fill 0    Which is a lot more concise than Array apply 0  new Array n   map i   gt  value   It is possible to drop the 0 in  fill   and run without arguments  which will fill the array with undefined   However  this will fail in Typescript

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As explained above  using new Array size  is somewhat dangerous  Instead of using it directly  place it inside an  quot array creator function quot   You can easily make sure that this function is bug-free and you avoid the danger of calling new Array size  directly  Also  you can give it an optional default initial value  This createArray function does exactly that  function createArray size  defaultVal        const arr   new Array size       if  defaultVal     undefined               optional default value         for  let i   0  i  lt  size    i                arr i    defaultVal                      return arr

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I m surprised there hasn t been a functional solution suggested that allows you to set the length in one line  The following is based on UnderscoreJS   var test     map   range 4   function      return undefined      console log test length     For reasons mentioned above  I d avoid doing this unless I wanted to initialize the array to a specific value  It s interesting to note there are other libraries that implement range including Lo-dash and Lazy  which may have different performance characteristics

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Array 6   map x   gt  0       0  0  0  0  0  0   OR Array 6  fill 0       0  0  0  0  0  0   Note  you can t loop empty slots i e  Array 4  forEach      gt        OR   typescript safe   Array 6  fill null  map     i    gt  i       0  1  2  3  4  5    OR Classic method using a function   works in any browser   function NewArray size        var x           for  var i   0  i  lt  size    i            x i    i            return x     var a   NewArray 10       0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9    Creating nested arrays When creating a 2D array with the fill intuitively should create new instances  But what actually going to happen is the same array will be stored as a reference  var a   Array 3  fill  6           6    6    6      a 0  push 9          6  9    6  9    6  9      Solution var a       Array 3   map x   gt        a 0  push 4  2          4  2              So a 3x2 Array will look something like this      Array 3   map x   gt  Array 2  fill 0           0  0    0  0    0  0       N-dimensional array function NArray    dimensions        var index   0      function NArrayRec dims            var first   dims 0   next   dims slice   splice 1            if dims length  gt  1               return Array dims 0   fill null  map  x  i    gt  NArrayRec next             return Array dims 0   fill null  map  x  i    gt   index                return NArrayRec dimensions      var arr   NArray 3  2  4               0   1   2   3        4   5   6   7                  8   9   10  11      12  13  14  15                  16  17  18  19      20  21  22  23           Initialize a chessboard var Chessboard       Array 8   map  x  j    gt        return Array 8  fill null  map  y  i    gt            return    String fromCharCode 65   i    8 - j                       A8  B8  C8  D8  E8  F8  G8  H8         A7  B7  C7  D7  E7  F7  G7  H7         A6  B6  C6  D6  E6  F6  G6  H6         A5  B5  C5  D5  E5  F5  G5  H5         A4  B4  C4  D4  E4  F4  G4  H4         A3  B3  C3  D3  E3  F3  G3  H3         A2  B2  C2  D2  E2  F2  G2  H2         A1  B1  C1  D1  E1  F1  G1  H1      Math filled values handy little method overload when working with math  function NewArray  size   method  linear         method   method      i   gt  i         linear   linear    false      var x           for  var i   0  i  lt  size    i           x  i     method  linear   i    size-1    i        return x     NewArray  4          0  1  2  3    NewArray  4  Math sin          0  0 841  0 909  0 141    NewArray  4  Math sin  true         0  0 327  0 618  0 841    var pow2     x     gt  x   x   NewArray  4  pow2          0  1  4  9    NewArray  4  pow2  true          0  0 111  0 444  1

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Assuming that Array s length is constant  In Javascript  This is what we do   const intialArray   new Array specify the value

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ES6 introduces Array from which lets you create an Array from any  array-like  or iterables objects   Array from  length  10    x  i    gt  i       0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9    In this case  length  10  represents the minimal definition of an  array-like  object  an empty object with just a length property defined   Array from allows for a second argument to map over the resulting array

[javascript] How to initialize an array's length in JavaScript?

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