How can I store reference to a variable within an array?
Put an object into the array instead:
var name = {};
name.title = "foo";
var array = [];
array["reference"] = name;
name.title = "bar";
// now returns "bar"
array["reference"].title;
Try pushing an object to the array instead and altering values within it.
var ar = [];
var obj = {value: 10};
ar[ar.length] = obj;
obj.value = 12;
alert(ar[0].value);
You can't.
JavaScript always pass by value. And everything is an object; var
stores the pointer, hence it's pass by pointer's value.
If your name = "bar"
is supposed to be inside a function, you'll need to pass in the whole array instead. The function will then need to change it using array["reference"] = "bar"
.
Btw, []
is an array literal. {}
is an object literal.
That array["reference"]
works because an Array is also an object, but array is meant to be accessed by 0-based index. You probably want to use {}
instead.
And foo["bar"]
is equivalent to foo.bar
. The longer syntax is more useful if the key can be dynamic, e.g., foo[bar]
, not at all the same with foo.bar (or if you want to use a minimizer like Google's Closure Compiler).