Javascript - Are all arrays literal?

Question

I was reading through the Mozilla Javascript documentation and I am a bit confused about the use of the word "literal". Specifically, are all arrays in Javascript considered to be "array literals".

• If no, could you please provide an example of a non-literal array.
• If yes, could you please provide an example of a variable that has a literal and non-literal variety (assuming such a thing exists) and explain how it differs to an array.

Answer 1

An array is a type of value (it can be stored in variables, passed to functions, etc).

An array literal is a type of syntax. Specifically it refers to [ ... ] (where ... is a comma-separated list of values).

Executing an array literal creates an array at runtime. However, there are other ways to create arrays:

var x = new Array();

x contains an array that was not created from a literal.

Similarly, there are all kinds of operations that produce strings, but only "..." and '...' are string literals.