How to Create an Array Containing 1 to N in JavaScript

If you have to create an array that starts at 1 and ends at 1000, I'll bet $20 that you're not going to type in all the numbers manually.

But how would you create such an enormous array?

Using the For Loop

Let's begin with one of the most basic method of JavaScript. Almost everyone I know that knows JavaScript learned about the for loop at the very beginning of their JS learning path. So I'm assuming you're familiar with it all too well.

Let's see this in action:

const bigArray = [];

for (let i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
  bigArray[i] = i + 1;
}

console.log(bigArray);
// An array starting at 1 that ends at 1000

• Here i starts at 0 and ends at 999, this gives the array a length of 1000.
• For each index of the array, we store that-index + 1 to it. Because the specification of this array tells us to return an array beginning at 1.
• If we had not added the 1 with every item of the array, we'd have end up with an array beginning at 0 and ending at 999.

Using the Array.from Method

We can return the same array we created with for loop in a much easier way using the Array.from method.

Let's see this in action:

const numbers = Array.from(
    {length: 1000},
    (item, index) => item = index + 1
);

console.log(numbers);
// we get the same result!

What did we do here?

The Array.from() static method creates a new, shallow-copied Array instance from an array-like or iterable object.

• If we pass anything iterable to Array.from it'd return us an array.
• Remember that after everything array is an object in JavaScript and it have some built in property to it.
• So we destructured the length property out of a newly created array and set its value to 1000.
• The Array.from has a built in map function to it.
• We iterate over the array of 1000 items with the map function and pass in the current item and the current index.
• Finally we set the index + 1 value to the current item.

That's how we can easily get back an array beginning at a certain number and ending at another.

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