Condensing a sparse array in Javascript?

Question

I have an array of elements where the entries are sparse. How can I easily condense the sparse array into a dense array so that I don\'t have to keep checking for null and

Answer 1

filter is a JavaScript extension to the ECMA-262 standard; as such it may not be present in other implementations of the standard. You can work around this by inserting the following code at the beginning of your scripts, allowing use of filter in ECMA-262 implementations which do not natively support it. Reference : MDN.

A cross browser solution using filter

if (!Array.prototype.filter) {  // Add the filter method to the 'Array prototype' if it's not available
    Array.prototype.filter = function(fun /*, thisp*/) {
        var len = this.length >>> 0;
        if (typeof fun != "function") {
            throw new TypeError();
        }

        var res = [];
        var thisp = arguments[1]; 
        for (var i = 0; i < len; i++) {
            if (i in this) {
                var val = this[i];
                if (fun.call(thisp, val, i, this)) {
                    res.push(val);
                }
            }
        }
        return res;
    };
}

var sparse = [];
sparse[1] = undefined;
sparse[5] = 3;
sparse[10] = null;

dense=sparse.filter(function(a){ //Call the `filter` method
    return a!== undefined && a != null;
});

DEMO.