How to easily truncate an array with JavaScript?

Question

Linq has a convenient operator method called Take() to return a given number of elements in anything that implements IEnumerable. Is there anything

Answer 1

Set .length property to a lower value.

Official documentation: Array.prototype.length

Answer 2

If you're asking how to truncate (modify an array by removing the elements from the end) then use splice:

var a1 = [2,4,6,8];
var a2 = a1.splice(-2,2); // a1=[2,4], a2=[6,8]

If you're asking how to retrieve a subset of an array without modifying the original, then use slice.

var a1 = [2,4,6,8];
var a2 = a1.slice(-2); // a1=[2,4,6,8], a2=[6,8]

Just remember splice modifies, slice accesses. Negative numbers as first arg indicate index from the end of the array.

Answer 3

(2 years later...) If you're truly looking to truncate an array, you can also use the length attribute:

var stooges = ["Moe", "Larry", "Shemp", "Curly", "Joe"];
stooges.length = 3; // now stooges is ["Moe", "Larry", "Shemp"]

Note: if you assign a length which is longer than current length, undefined array elements are introduced, as shown below.

var stooges = ["Moe", "Larry", "Shemp"];
stooges.length = 5;
alert(typeof stooges[4]); // alerts "undefined"

EDIT:

As @twhitehead mentioned below, the addition of undefined elements can be avoided by doing this:

var stooges = ["Moe", "Larry", "Shemp"];
stooges.length = Math.min(stooges.length, 5); 
alert(stooges.length)// alerts "3"

Answer 4

If you want to selectively pull elements out of an array, you can use the jQuery.grep method.

(from the jQuery docs)

var arr = [ 1, 9, 3, 8, 6, 1, 5, 9, 4, 7, 3, 8, 6, 9, 1 ];

$("div").text(arr.join(", "));

arr = jQuery.grep(arr, function(n, i){
  return (n != 5 && i > 4);
});

$("p").text(arr.join(", "));

arr = jQuery.grep(arr, function (a) { return a != 9; });
$("span").text(arr.join(", "));

Answer 5

If you want to both get the elements as well as remove them from the array, use splice.

If you want to keep the elements in the array, use slice

Answer 6

There is a slice method

array.slice(0, 4);

Will return the first four elements.

Don't forget to assign it back to your variable if you want to discard the other values.

Note: This is just regular javascript, no need for jquery.