How can I create a javascript associative array { } with dynamic key names?

Question

Basically I have a loop incrementing i, and I want to do this:

var fish = { 'fishInfo[' + i + '][0]': 6 };

however it does not work.

Any ideas how to do this? I want the result to be

fish is { 'fishInfo[0][0]': 6 };
fish is { 'fishInfo[1][0]': 6 };
fish is { 'fishInfo[2][0]': 6 };

etc.

I am using $.merge to combine them if you think why on earth is he doing that :)

Answer 1

Declare an empty object, then you can use array syntax to assign properties to it dynamically.

var fish = {};

fish[<propertyName>] = <value>;

Answer 2

Do this:

var fish = {};
fish['fishInfo[' + i + '][0]'] =  6;

It works, because you can read & write to objects using square brackets notation like this:

my_object[key] = value;

and this:

alert(my_object[key]);