JavaScript new keyword and memory management

Question

Coming from C++ it is hard grained into my mind that everytime I call new I call delete. In JavaScript I find myself calling new occasionally in my code but (hoping) the garbage collection functionality in the browser will take care of the mess for me.

I don't like this - is there a delete method in JavaScript and is how I use it different from in C++?

Thanks.

Answer 1

var component = new Component(); component = null; // delete this at next garbage collection 

Answer 2

Incidentally, the "new" keyword isn't really necessary in javascript, and has nothing (directly) to do with allocating memory. All "new" does is pass a new, empty object called "this" (this = {}) as a hidden argument to the function.

var MyClass = function(){     // fresh empty object "this" gets passed to function     // when you use the "new" keyword      this.method = function(){} }  var myInstance = new MyClass(); 

Javascript can get kind of hairy with nested closures and multiple "this" variables floating around in different scopes. I prefer to do it this way:

var MyNoNewClass = function(){     // I find this more explicit and less confusing     var self = {}     self.method = function(){}     return self; }  var myNoNewInstance = MyNoNewClass()