Question

I am trying to work with arrays in javascript. Consider the following code:

 var visList = '1234,5678,9'
 var visListArray = new Array(visList);
 for (i = 0; i <= visListArray.length - 1; i++)
 {
      alert(visListArray[i]);
 }

Why doesn’t this split the array into individual numbers instead of all of them clumped together?

Any help would be really appreciated.

Many thanks

Answer 1

Create the array by calling split() on the string:

var visList = '1234,5678,9'  
var visListArray = visList.split(",");

You cannot substitue a string that looks like code for actual code. While this would work:

var visListArray = new Array(1234,5678,9);

Yours doesn’t because the string is not interpreted by the Array constructor as 3 comma separated arguments, it is interpreted as one string.

Edit: Note that calling split() on a string results in an Array of strings. If you want an Array of numbers, you’ll need to iterate the Array converting each string to a number. One convenient way to do that is to use the map() method:

visListArray = visList.split(",").map(function (item) {
    return +item;
});

See the compatibility note for using map() in older browsers.