var dedup = function(a)
{
a.sort(); //get the dups together
var b = []; //create a replacement array
for(var i=a.length;i–;) //loop down the original array
{
if(a[i]!==a[i-1]) //since they are bunched, only pull out the ones that don’t match
{
b[b.length] = a[i]; // give the replacement array the ones that dont match
}
}
return b; // return the replacement arra
}
alert(‘Original Array:\’bob\’,\’sally\’,9,\’sally\’,\’george\’,\’george \’,\’andrew\’,23,230,\’23\’\n’ + ‘Deduped Array:’+ dedup(['bob','sally',9,'sally','george','george ','andrew',23,230,'23']));

I’m definitely not suggesting it’s a good idea to misuse an array by treating it like an associative hash. What I’m suggesting is that others have nonetheless already done so, and my point was that this kind of thing can break existing code.

I know better, man.

_____________
grow taller

a = a.sort().join(“,,”).replace(/(,|^)([^,]+)(,,\2)+(,|$)/g,”$1$2$4″).replace(/,,+/g,”,”).replace(/,$/,”").split(“,”);

NOTE:
1) Choose delimiter carefully (this example uses “,”)
2) Returned array is sorted!
3) Returned array is an array of strings

Cheers,
Ivan

Array.prototype.unique = function ()
{
var r = new Array();
for(var i = 0, n = this.length; i < n; i++)
{
if (this.lastIndexOf(this[i]) == i) r.push(this[i]);
}
return r;
}