• Changes to the Array object.

• Array objects can be created using literal notation.
• When the <SCRIPT> tag includes LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2", array(1) creates a new array with a[0]=1.
• When created as the result of a match between a regular expression and a string, arrays have new properties that provide information about the match.
• concat joins two arrays and returns a new array.
• pop removes the last element from an array and returns that element.
• push adds one or more elements to the end of an array and returns that last element added.
• shift removes the first element from an array and returns that element
• unshift adds one or more elements to the front of an array and returns the new length of the array.
• slice extracts a section from an array and returns a new array
• splice adds and/or removes elements from an array and returns the removed elements.
• sort now works on all platforms. It no longer converts undefined elements to null; instead, it sorts them to the high end of the array.
• Changes to the Function object.

• Nested functions. You can nest functions within functions. (That is, JavaScript now supports lambda expressions and lexical closures.) See Function.
• New function property arity. The arity property indicates the number of arguments expected by a function.
• New arguments property. The arguments.callee property provides information about the invoked function.
• New Lock class. The Lock class allows safe sharing of information with multiple incoming requests.
• Changes to the Number object. Number now produces NaN rather than an error if x is a string that does not contain a well-formed numeric literal.
• New RegExp object for regular expressions. Regular expressions are patterns used to match character combinations in strings. You create a regular expression as an object that has methods used to execute a match against a string. You can also pass the regular expression as an argument to the String methods match, replace, search, and split. The RegExp object has properties most of which are set when a match is successful, such as lastMatch which specifies the last successful match. The Array object has new properties that provide information about a successful match such as input which specifies the original input string against which the match was executed. See RegExp for information.
• New SendMail class. The SendMail class lets you generate email from JavaScript.
• New or changed String methods.

• charCodeAt returns a number specifying the ISO-Latin-1 codeset value of the character at the specified index in a string object.
• concat combines the text of two strings and returns a new string.
• fromCharCode constructs a string from a specified sequence of numbers that are ISO-Latin-1 codeset values.
• match executes a search for a match between a string and a regular expression.
• replace executes a search for a match between a string and a regular expression, and replaces the matched substring with a new substring.
• search tests for a match between a string and a regular expression.
• slice extracts a section of an string and returns a new string.
• split includes several new features and changes. It can take a regular expression argument, as well as a fixed string, by which to split the object string. It can take a limit count so that it won't include trailing empty elements in the resulting array. If you specify LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2" in the <SCRIPT> tag, string.split(" ") splits on any run of one or more white space characters including spaces, tabs, line feeds, and carriage returns.
• substr returns the characters in a string collecting the specified number of characters beginning with a specified location in the string.
• substring if you specify LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2" in the <SCRIPT> tag, this method no longer swaps index numbers when the first index is greater than the second.
• New top-level functions Number and String. The Number function converts an object to a number. The String function converts an object to a string.
• Changes to methods of all objects.

• eval is no longer a method of individual objects; it is available only as a top-level function.
• toString converts an object or array to a literal. For this behavior, LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2" must be specified in the <SCRIPT> tag.
• watch is a new method of all objects. It watches for a property to be assigned a value and runs a function when that occurs.
• unwatch is a new method of all objects. It removes a watchpoint set with the watch method.
• New or changed operators.

• The new delete operator deletes an object, an object's property, or an element at a specified index in an array. See "delete" on page 395.
• If the <SCRIPT> tag uses LANGUAGE=JavaScript1.2, the equality operators == and != do not attempt to convert operands from one type to another, and always compare identity of like-typed operands. See "Comparison Operators" on page 385.
• New or changed statements.

• The break and continue statements can now be used with the new labeled statement.
• do...while repeats a loop until the test condition evaluates to false.
• export allows a signed script to provide functions to other signed or unsigned scripts.
• import allows a script to import functions from a signed script which has exported the information.
• label allows the program to break outside nested loops or to continue a loop outside the current loop.
• switch allows the program to test several conditions easily.

Last Updated: 11/13/98 10:22:42