Array Or String

[Renegade605]

So I have a function where you pass it an array of strings, or arrays. Eg:

func([ "string1", [ "string2-1", "string2-2", "string2-3" ], "string3" ]);

The idea is, to make things easier on the end-user, they don't have to put every string within an array. If all 3 indices of the array are the same, they just specify a string and the function will convert it to an array where all 3 values are the same.The way I was doing it was this: ('ops' is the array arg that is passed to it)

for (var i = 0; i < ops.length; i++){	if (ops[i][0].length > 1) { ops[i] = ops[i] || [ ]; }	else { ops[i] = [ ops[i] ] || [ ]; }}

This was made under the assumption that retrieving the index of a string just returned the character at that position.This presents two problems:

1. If the user wants to specify an array where the 0 index is a string of length 1 (ie. "a"), the code will think it's a regular string and not an array, messing up the script.
2. (This is the one I didn't see coming.) IE doesn't seem to behave the same way as FF when dealing with a string like an array. Instead of returning the character at pos 0, it returns 0, thus giving the error "0.length" is not a function.

Therefore, it seems to me like I need a better way of detecting string versus array. I've tried comparing the original (ops) and the var with the .toString() method. Code:

if (ops[i] == ops[i].toString()) { ops[i] = [ ops[i] ] || [ ]; }else { ops[i] = ops[i] || [ ]; }

According to tests I ran in Firebug's console:

"string".toString() = "string"[ "array_1", "array_2" ].toString() = "array_1,array_2"

So I thought this would work. However, logging (ops == ops.toString()) always returned true, whether ops was a string or an array.So now I'm stumped, does anyone else have some insight into this?Thanks,

[justsomeguy]

If you want to convert a string to an array, you can use string.split. If you want to refer to a specific character in a string, you can use string.charAt.To detect an array, one way is to check for a method that exists on arrays, like array.push or array.shift. If it's undefined, it's not an array. If obj.push is undefined, but obj.length is defined, it's probably a string, because both strings and arrays have a length property but only an array has a push method. You can use the typeof operator to check if something is undefined:if ((typeof obj.push) == "undefined")