In addition to the basic methods forJavaScript arrays there are some new, powerful techniques for modifying array content. Like push, pop, shift and unshift , these methods are referred to as mutators , due to the fact that they modify the array. In this article, I’ll cover two: fill
and reverse
.
fill
“Zeroes out” an array with any replacement value. Given an array of scores
:
var scores = [15, 22, 3, 7, 11];
“Wiping out” every record in the array and viewing the result in the console:
scores.fill(0);
> [0, 0, 0, 0, 0]
fill
can take two other arguments: the first, start
is the point from which the fill will take place. Taking the current state of scores
, we can fill from the third value with:
scores.fill(4,2);
The result:
> [0, 0, 4, 4, 4]
fill
can also take an end
value, where the fill stops . Of course, the fill “insert” value can be anything you wish: a number, string, or null
, for example.
fill
is part of ES6 / JS 2015, and is therefore supported in all recent browser versions except for IE and Opera; Mozilla Developer Network suggests a polyfill for those and older browser versions.
reverse
Pretty straightforward: reverse
reverses the order of elements. Given an arraymolluscs
:
var molluscs = ["oysters", "mussels", "limpets"];
Reversing the array and showing the results in the console:
molluscs.reverse()
> ["limpets", "mussels", "oysters"]