Do loops check the array.length every time when comparing i against array.length?

Question

I was browsing around and I found this:

var i, len;
for(i = 0, len = array.length; i < len; i++) {  
   //...
}

My first thoughts are:

Answer 1

Is it worth it? (obviously yes, why else he will do it this way?)

Absolutely yes. Because, as you say, loop will calculate array length each time. So this will cause an enormous overhead. Run the following code snippets in your firebug or chrome dev tool vs.

// create an array with 50.000 items
(function(){
    window.items = [];
    for (var i = 0; i < 50000; i++) {
        items.push(i);
    }
})();

// a profiler function that will return given function's execution time in milliseconds
var getExecutionTime = function(fn) {
    var start = new Date().getTime();
    fn();
    var end = new Date().getTime();
    console.log(end - start);
}

var optimized = function() {
    var newItems = [];
    for (var i = 0, len = items.length; i < len; i++) {
        newItems.push(items[i]);
    }
};


var unOptimized = function() {
    var newItems= [];
    for (var i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {
        newItems.push(items[i]);
    }
};

getExecutionTime(optimized);
getExecutionTime(unOptimized);

Here is the approximate results in various browsers

Browser    optimized    unOptimized
Firefox    14           26
Chrome     15           32
IE9        22           40
IE8        82           157
IE7        76           148 

So consider it again, and use optimized way :)
Note: I tried to work this code on jsPerf but I couldn't access jsPerf now. I guess, it is down when I tried.