Question

In my script there is a need to create a hash table, and I searched in google for this. Most of the folks are recommending JavaScript object for this purpose. The The problem is some of the keys in the hash table have a "." in them. I am able to create these keys easily with the associative arrays.

I don’t understand why associative arrays are bad. The first thing that is mentioned on the sites that I looked at is the length property.

I am coming from the Perl background, where I used hashes. Most common uses were to get the value from a key, check if a key exists, delete a key-value pair, and add a key-value pair. If these are my common uses, can I safely use an associative array?

Answer 1

In JavaScript, objects are associative arrays…there aren’t separate concepts for them. You are also able to safely use ‘.’ in a key name, but you can only access the value using the bracket notation:

var foo = {}
foo['bar'] = 'test';
foo['baz.bin'] = 'value';

alert(foo.bar); // Shows 'test'
alert(foo['baz.bin']); // Shows 'value'

If you’re using them already and they work, you’re safe.