What's the difference between .substr(0,1) or .charAt(0)?

Question

We were wondering in this thread if there was a real difference between the use of .substr(0,1) and the use of .charAt(0) when you want to get the

Answer 1

Unless your whole script is based on the need for doing fast string manipulation, I wouldn't worry about the performance aspect at all. I'd use charAt() on the grounds that it's readable and the most specific tool for the job provided by the language. Also, substr() is not strictly standard, and while it's very unlikely any new ECMAScript implementation would omit it, it could happen. The standards-based alternatives to str.charAt(0) are str.substring(0, 1) and str.slice(0, 1), and for ECMAScript 5 implementations, str[0].