How to extend an existing JavaScript array with an

Question

There doesn't seem to be a way to extend an existing JavaScript array with another array, i.e. to emulate Python's extend method.

I want to achieve the following:

>>> a = [1, 2]
[1, 2]
>>> b = [3, 4, 5]
[3, 4, 5]
>>> SOMETHING HERE
>>> a
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

I know there's a a.concat(b) method, but it creates a new array instead of simply extending the first one. I'd like an algorithm that works efficiently when a is significantly larger than b (i.e. one that does not copy a).

_{Note: This is not a duplicate of How to append something to an array? -- the goal here is to add the whole contents of one array to the other, and to do it "in place", i.e. without copying all elements of the extended array.}

Answer 1

You should use a loop-based technique. Other answers on this page that are based on using .apply can fail for large arrays.

A fairly terse loop-based implementation is:

Array.prototype.extend = function (other_array) {
    /* You should include a test to check whether other_array really is an array */
    other_array.forEach(function(v) {this.push(v)}, this);
}

You can then do the following:

var a = [1,2,3];
var b = [5,4,3];
a.extend(b);

DzinX's answer (using push.apply) and other .apply based methods fail when the array that we are appending is large (tests show that for me large is > 150,000 entries approx in Chrome, and > 500,000 entries in Firefox). You can see this error occurring in this jsperf.

An error occurs because the call stack size is exceeded when 'Function.prototype.apply' is called with a large array as the second argument. (MDN has a note on the dangers of exceeding call stack size using Function.prototype.apply - see the section titled "apply and built-in functions".)

For a speed comparison with other answers on this page, check out this jsperf (thanks to EaterOfCode). The loop-based implementation is similar in speed to using Array.push.apply, but tends to be a little slower than Array.slice.apply.

Interestingly, if the array you are appending is sparse, the forEach based method above can take advantage of the sparsity and outperform the .apply based methods; check out this jsperf if you want to test this for yourself.

By the way, do not be tempted (as I was!) to further shorten the forEach implementation to:

Array.prototype.extend = function (array) {
    array.forEach(this.push, this);
}

because this produces garbage results! Why? Because Array.prototype.forEach provides three arguments to the function it calls - these are: (element_value, element_index, source_array). All of these will be pushed onto your first array for every iteration of forEach if you use "forEach(this.push, this)"!

Answer 2

You can create a polyfill for extend as I have below. It will add to the array; in-place and return itself, so that you can chain other methods.

if (Array.prototype.extend === undefined) {
  Array.prototype.extend = function(other) {
    this.push.apply(this, arguments.length > 1 ? arguments : other);
    return this;
  };
}

function print() {
  document.body.innerHTML += [].map.call(arguments, function(item) {
    return typeof item === 'object' ? JSON.stringify(item) : item;
  }).join(' ') + '\n';
}
document.body.innerHTML = '';

var a = [1, 2, 3];
var b = [4, 5, 6];

print('Concat');
print('(1)', a.concat(b));
print('(2)', a.concat(b));
print('(3)', a.concat(4, 5, 6));

print('\nExtend');
print('(1)', a.extend(b));
print('(2)', a.extend(b));
print('(3)', a.extend(4, 5, 6));

body {
  font-family: monospace;
  white-space: pre;
}

Answer 3

Combining the answers...

Array.prototype.extend = function(array) {
    if (array.length < 150000) {
        this.push.apply(this, array)
    } else {
        for (var i = 0, len = array.length; i < len; ++i) {
            this.push(array[i]);
        };
    }  
}

Answer 4

If you want to use jQuery, there is $.merge()

Example:

a = [1, 2];
b = [3, 4, 5];
$.merge(a,b);

Result: a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Answer 5

It is possible to do it using splice():

b.unshift(b.length)
b.unshift(a.length)
Array.prototype.splice.apply(a,b) 
b.shift() // Restore b
b.shift() // 

But despite being uglier it is not faster than push.apply, at least not in Firefox 3.0.

Answer 6

I like the a.push.apply(a, b) method described above, and if you want you can always create a library function like this:

Array.prototype.append = function(array)
{
    this.push.apply(this, array)
}

and use it like this

a = [1,2]
b = [3,4]

a.append(b)