title: Associative array versus object in JavaScript
body: <p>In my script there is a need to create a hash table, and I searched in google for this. Most of the folks are recommending JavaScript object for this purpose. The The problem is some of the keys in the hash table have a &quot;.&quot; in them. I am able to create these keys easily with the associative arrays.</p>
  <p>I don't understand why associative arrays are bad. The first thing that is mentioned on the sites that I looked at is the length property.</p>
  <p>I am coming from the Perl background, where I used hashes. Most common uses were to get the value from a key, check if a key exists, delete a key-value pair, and add a key-value pair. If these are my common uses, can I safely use an associative array?</p>