A fast and crossbrowser function to make an Array

An absolutely common task present in almost every library, is to transform a generic collection/list of objects or DOM Elements into a friendly Array.

Cases Scenario

• It is possible to apply directly an Array.prototype.slice call to quickly return an Array


• It is not possible at all apply every kind of Array prototype to the list

Cases scenario detection

When we execute a piece of JavaScript in a web page, we can assume that we have at least one DOM element in that page, as the script itself for example, so it is always possible to obtain a collection of elements calling document.getElementsByTagName("script") or a generic ("*") in this case probably superflous considering the latter assumption.

Cross browser and fast makeArray proposal

var makeArray = function(push, slice){
    try{
        // Andrea Giammarchi proposal
        slice.call(document.getElementsByTagName("script"), 0);
        return function(array, results){
            array = array instanceof Array ? array : slice.call(array, 0);
            results ? push.apply(results, array) : results = array;
            return results
        }
    }catch(e){
        return function(array, results){
            if(!(array instanceof Array))
                for(var ret = [], i = 0, length = array.length; i < length; i++)
                    ret[i] = array[i];
            else
                var ret = array;
            results ? push.apply(results, ret) : results = ret;
            return results
        }
    }
}(Array.prototype.push, Array.prototype.slice);

Summary

The try catch is executed only once, the Array prototypes are cached once as well to guarantee cross libraries compatibility. The function is assigned differently for those browsers that can apply the slice prototype to the collection and those that cannot (mainly Internet Explorer).
Accepted parameters are two, inspired by Sizzle function, to allow us to concatenate elements into a collection.

The collection is transformed into an Array only if necessary, since it does not make sense to perform a slice call in every case.

Compatiblity? It should be every browser that supports try and catch statement :-)