The string "</script>" in an array is interpreted, is there a workaround? [duplicate]

Question

This :

<script type="text/javascript">
var a = new Array("</script>");
alert(a);
</script>

...doesn't work as expected (by me at least). The string "</script>" is interpreted as the end of the script even though it's in quotes. Please see these jsfiddles :

http://jsfiddle.net/RYbTS/

http://jsfiddle.net/PB73z/

The first declares the first element of the array in the normal way while the second declares it in a compact form. In both cases, browsers (Chrome, FF, IE) stop the script at "</script>" and never get to the alert.

It behaves the same way whether using quotes or double quotes.

Is it expected ? Is there a workaround?

Edit: thanks all, I'll escape the backslash. Sorry I couldn't accept everyone's answer, I accepted the first one, but thanks to everyone.

The link provided by Juhana explains this behavior:

all the HTML is parsed before the text nodes in the element are passed to the JS engine, </script> gets no special treatment for being inside a JS string literal

Answer 1

You could escape the / character:

<script type="text/javascript">
var a = new Array("<\/script>");
alert(a);
</script>

Here's an updated fiddle.