Convert array name to string

Question

I have a bunch of arrays, and a bunch of folders with files I'm trying to get to. The items in the arrays correspond to the file names and the array names match the folder names.

So I have

 var myArray = ['my', 'file', 'here'];
 var myArray2 = ['some', 'more', 'files'];

& similar as audio files. For example `myArray/my.mp3'

I'm trying to create a string like that dynamically. I wanted to somehow convert my array names to strings but apparently that can't be done. Any other solutions much appreciated.

Answer 1

Not sure I understand your question. If you want flexibility, you could use an object. Initialize it at the beginning of your life-cycle app like so:

var obj = { name: 'tmp', value: null }

Later, you could assign both a name and a value to your object based on the user action:

obj['name'] = 'chosenArray';
obj['value'] = myArrayTwo;

Hope this helps,

R.

Answer 2

You technically CAN access a variable using a string containing its name:

var array1 = [1,2,3,4];
var array2 = [5,6,7,8];

var pick = "array2";

var chosen = window[pick];

and you can also create a global variable that way

var newvarname = "array3";

window[newvarname] = [9,10,11,12];

This works because window in a browser is a predefined object that contains all the variables and the functions. You in addition to change and access globals using window you can also iterate over all the global variables:

// Collect names of all globally defined arrays
arrays = [];
for (var n in window) {
    if (window[n] && window[n].constructor == Array)
        arrays.push(n);
}

but I can think very few cases in which you may want to do that (if you have a function or a variable named "foo" and the directory contains a file named "foo", do you really want to destroy your function/variable?).

Probably you should simply use an object to store your files

var myobj = {};
myobj[filename] = ...;

Answer 3

You want to use an object where property names are programatically accessible:

var audioFiles = {
    "myArray": ['my', 'file', 'here'],
    "myArray2": ['some', 'more', 'files']
};

You can easily loop that object, and access the arrays dynamically via bracket notation .