Question

First, I was calling my functions like this:

var a=1;
a=foo(a,2);

Then I discovered prototype and called my functions like this:

var a=1;
a=a.foo(2);

And smaller if it’s for arrays or objects:

var a=[1,2,3];
a.foo(2);

Is there a way to call functions like this: a(2) or a[2] with a hack or something?

Answer 1

You could do this;

var a=[1,2,3];
var m = "reallyLongMethodName";
a[m](2);

Which would call a.reallyLongMethodName(2) using square bracket notation.

Things like this is possible in JavaScript:

var a=[1,2,3];
var c = a.foo;
c(2);

But, this won’t work in your case as the this reference inside c would no longer be the array.

You could fix this using call() or apply();

c.call(a, 2);

But that’s probably too long for your liking.

You could also create a wrapper function;

function c(ar, val) {
    ar.foo(val);
}

c(a, 2);

… but again, that’s probably too long for your liking ;).

So all in all, what you’ve got is as short as it’ll be… Congratulations. You’ve made your code as unreadable as possible.