Question

The answer to this question seems like it would be obvious, but I’m always looking to improve my semantics, so bear with me.

I have an array structure with individual items containing X,Y coordinates

var example = new Array();
example.push({x:0,y:0});

In my code I have a set interval that updates my canvas and checks for certain conditions. Including one similar to this

if(example[0].x == other.x && example[0].y == other.y)
{
//do something
}

The issue is that the array is very dynamic, and when the code is first executed the example array is empty. Hence, Chrome throws errors along the lines of “Cannot get property x”. To shut up the console, I added a dummy item to the array {x:”~”, y:”~”} but it seems really unintuitive. Have I implemented an undesirable data structure? What’s a simple way to handle if statements for objects that… don’t exist?

Answer 1

Why don’t you just check whether the array has elements?

if (example.length && ...)

Or whether the first element is true:

if (example[0] && ...)