Weird behavior and I'm just posting this question to see if anyone knows the reason for this or whether my code is just plain wrong:

string text = "~"; //yip, let's take some weird character
alert(text[0]);
//all major browsers output "~"
//IE6 & 7: undefined
alert(text.charAt(0));
//works in all browsers

Now my question is: Is using a text as an array not supported in IE7, is the code wrong in general and is it OK to use .charAt(i) instead of string[i]?

PS: There is some guy who answered his own question regarding exactly this. My question remains: Where is this documented? Is this a regular IE "bug"?

Weird behavior and I'm just posting this question to see if anyone knows the reason for this or whether my code is just plain wrong:

string text = "~"; //yip, let's take some weird character
alert(text[0]);
//all major browsers output "~"
//IE6 & 7: undefined
alert(text.charAt(0));
//works in all browsers

Now my question is: Is using a text as an array not supported in IE7, is the code wrong in general and is it OK to use .charAt(i) instead of string[i]?

PS: There is some guy who answered his own question regarding exactly this. My question remains: Where is this documented? Is this a regular IE "bug"?

• javascript
• arrays
• string
• internet-explorer

Share Improve this question Follow edited May 23, 2017 at 12:14 CommunityBot 111 silver badge asked Dec 6, 2011 at 8:52 Dennis GDennis G 21.8k2121 gold badges100100 silver badges135135 bronze badges

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1 Answer 1

Sorted by: Reset to default 8

Accessing string array-like is not standard in ECMAScript 3:

https://developer.mozilla/en/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String#section_5

Array-like character access (the second way above) is not part of ECMAScript 3. It is a JavaScript and ECMAScript 5 feature.

What you do is split the string:

var textChars = text.split('');
alert(textChars[0]);