 Overview of
declaring dense arrays
There is an alternative way of assigning values to an array
during declaration. The below illustrates this form:
var myarray=new Array("one","two","three")
The above is what's called a dense array, since it
compresses the declaration and initialization of an array into one step. As
you can see, we directly passed in the values of the array as parameters .
To access the individual values inside, simply use the same old notation:
alert(myarray[0]) //alerts "one"
Access by name
Accessing an array element by name is also possible in dense
arrays. This means a programmer can access the values of a dense array not
only through the value's position within the array, like above, but also, through its
name. For example, the below also alerts "one":
alert(myarray["one"]) //alerts "one"
There is no particular advantage to accessing a dense
array through the value's name other than that it provides better
documentation (others can more readily see which valuesis being accessed).
Lets now demonstrate the power of dense arrays by
showing how it can significantly lessen the code required to create a script
that writes out the current date and time.
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