Is explicit ".prototype" really needed?

Question

I often see something like this in other people's scripts:

bar = Array.prototype.slice.call(whatever, 1)

However, the following shorter notation works fine as well:

bar = [].slice.call(whatever, 1)

Are these two constructs fully equivalent? Are there engines (browsers) that treat them differently?

Answer 1

Yes, fully equivalent.

It happens to be that the access via .prototype is slightly faster because no new object instance needs to get created. However, thats what we call microoptimization.

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A nice way to get entirely rid of deep chaining, is to invoke Function.prototype.bind.

Example

(function( slice ) {
    slice( whatever, 1 );
}( Function.prototype.call.bind( Array.prototype.slice )));