Copying elements in array, and comparing them

[dcnguyen]

I'm a little dusty on my pointers and call by reference in JS...

What I want to do is create an array containing a subset of another array. Each entry in the array is an object with several properties.

Does the following work, as far as creating a whole new copy of an element? (I'm not using slice because these elements are not located contiguously in the array)

subArray.push(bigArray[id]);

And let's say I want to delete all elements in bigArray that are contained in subArray? Will this work?

if(subArray == bigArray[j]) {bigArray.splice(j,1);}

I'm guessing it won't since the if statement is comparing memory locations...so I'll have to do something like:

if(subArray.property1 == bigArray[j].property1){bigArray.splice(j,1);}

 

[trollacious]

If you use alert(subArray) you'll see the contents of the object as a long string. This means you can compare objects with each other without accessing individual properties.

Lee

 

[dcnguyen]

So the isEqual operator will automatically regard Objects as concatenated strings for the purposes of comparison?

 

[trollacious]

Yes. Objects are also associative arrays, which means

subArray.property1

is the same as

subArray['property1']

and allows you to access methods and properties using string variables, like

var prop = 'property1';
subArray[prop];

Lee

 

[dcnguyen]

Thanks