How can I store reference to a variable within an array?

Question

I\'m trying to create an array that maps strings to variables. It seems that the array stores the current value of the variable instead of storing a reference to the variabl

Answer 1

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).