JavaScript access string chars as array

Question

Is it ok to do this:

var myString=\"Hello!\";
alert(myString[0]); // shows \"H\" in an alert window

Or should it be done with either charAt

Answer 1

Using charAt is probably the best idea since it conveys the intent of your code most accurately. Calling substr for a single character is definitely an overkill.

alert(myString.charAt(0));

Answer 2

2018 answer: Yes it is OK to access strings like arrays.

The syntax is clear and concise. IE6 and IE7 are long gone. I see no reason not to use it.

Answer 3

In ES6 we can use destructuring since a string can be treated as an array:

const [...rest] = 'Hello!';

console.log(rest)
> Array ["H", "e", "l", "l", "o", "!"]

console.log(rest[0])
> "H"

Answer 4

Accessing characters as numeric properties of a string is non-standard prior to ECMAScript 5 and doesn't work in all browsers (for example, it doesn't work in IE 6 or 7). You should use myString.charAt(0) instead when your code has to work in non-ECMAScript 5 environments. Alternatively, if you're going to be accessing a lot of characters in the string then you can turn a string into an array of characters using its split() method:

var myString = "Hello!";
var strChars = myString.split("");
alert(strChars[0]);