How do you get a string to a character array in Ja

Question

How do you get a string to a character array in JavaScript?

I'm thinking getting a string like "Hello world!" to the array ['H','e','l','l','o',' ','w','o','r','l','d','!']

Answer 1

The spread Syntax

You can use the spread syntax, an Array Initializer introduced in ECMAScript 2015 (ES6) standard:

var arr = [...str];

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Examples

function a() {
    return arguments;
}

var str = 'Hello World';

var arr1 = [...str],
    arr2 = [...'Hello World'],
    arr3 = new Array(...str),
    arr4 = a(...str);

console.log(arr1, arr2, arr3, arr4);

The first three result in:

["H", "e", "l", "l", "o", " ", "W", "o", "r", "l", "d"]

The last one results in

{0: "H", 1: "e", 2: "l", 3: "l", 4: "o", 5: " ", 6: "W", 7: "o", 8: "r", 9: "l", 10: "d"}

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Browser Support

Check the ECMAScript ES6 compatibility table.

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Further reading

• MDN: Spread operator
• ECMAScript 2015 (ES6): 12.2.5 Array Initializer

spread is also referenced as "splat" (e.g. in PHP or Ruby or as "scatter" (e.g. in Python).

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Demo

Try before buy

Answer 2

It already is:

var mystring = 'foobar';

console.log(mystring[0]); // Outputs 'f'
console.log(mystring[3]); // Outputs 'b'

Or for a more older browser friendly version, use:

console.log(mystring.charAt(3)); // Outputs 'b'