Some languages like ruby come with "in-place" variations of a method. Arrays for example have tons of common stuff sort, reverse, etc. I could say array.sort which returns a new array, or I could just array.sort! which simply modifies it in-place. Initially I never understood the difference, but then it made more sense after reading about it.
Not everything is as it seems, in Ruby you can add elements dynamically to an array, which in reality just creates a new Array (based on the new size) and may keep the old one around until the garbage collector disposes of it.
Even JS has the ability to add/remove elements from an Array, because it's actually not an Array. It's a dictionary with an integer key and an object as it's value.
Full-Stack Software Engineer; using a background in Acting and Voice-Over to pursue a lifelong love of software and technology from an arts and humanities perspective.
This is a really interesting point! It makes sense for higher level languages like Ruby that focus on "developer friendliness" to have options like that built in rather than coding them in yourself, and it's interesting to dig a bit deeper into the concept and see why having the option is important in the first place.
Some languages like ruby come with "in-place" variations of a method. Arrays for example have tons of common stuff
sort,reverse, etc. I could sayarray.sortwhich returns a new array, or I could justarray.sort!which simply modifies it in-place. Initially I never understood the difference, but then it made more sense after reading about it.Wonder if Javascript has something similar.
Not everything is as it seems, in Ruby you can add elements dynamically to an array, which in reality just creates a new Array (based on the new size) and may keep the old one around until the garbage collector disposes of it.
Even JS has the ability to add/remove elements from an Array, because it's actually not an Array. It's a dictionary with an integer key and an object as it's value.
This is a really interesting point! It makes sense for higher level languages like Ruby that focus on "developer friendliness" to have options like that built in rather than coding them in yourself, and it's interesting to dig a bit deeper into the concept and see why having the option is important in the first place.
Thanks for the comment!
In JavaScript, array.sort() and array.reversed() are in-place. The out-of-place variants would be, respectively, toSorted() and toReversed().
Source: MDN