The unshit
array method adds an element to the beginning of an array and the shift
method removes the first element from an array.
Adding elements to the beginning of the array
Consider this array of names.
const names = ["John", "Lily", "Helen", "Roy"];
How can we add another name Michael
to the beginning of this array?
We can use the unshift
array method here to achieve this.
const names = ["John", "Lily", "Helen", "Roy"];
// add elements to the beginning
const newLength = names.unshift("Michael"); // Result: ["Michael", "John", "Lily", "Helen", "Roy"]
- The
unshift
method adds an element to the beginning of an array. - It accepts the item to be added as the argument
- It returns the new length of an array
Removing elements from the beginning of an array
Let's consider our old array with Michael
added.
const names = ["Michael", "John", "Lily", "Helen", "Roy"];
Now we no longer need Michael
and want to remove it.
We could use the shift
array method to acheive this.
const names = ["Michael", "John", "Lily", "Helen", "Roy"];
const newArray = names.shift();
- The
shift
method removes the first element on an array. - It didn't accept any arguments
- It returns the removed item