Now we're at part two of the class where we'll focus on working with the middle of an array. And when I say middle, technically, it could be the first element to the last element of the array. But I mean that we're not restricted to working with the first or last elements of the array, which all the methods that we've discussed so far work very specifically with the first and last elements of a JavaScript array. Now we're going to work with any array in any position. So we're going to find out how to add or remove any element in the middle of the array. And once again, we could remove or add the first element, the last element or the fifth element, or any other any any other element.
And we can do this by using the splice method, the JavaScript splice method provides a great way to work with elements in the middle of the array, and it's a little bit more complicated than the methods that we've discussed so far. So let's talk about that a little bit. So back to our array that the elements A, B, and C, and once again, we've learned how to Add one to the end, remove the last element, add one to the beginning, remove the first element. Pretty simple stuff. But now I want to, let's say I want to remove the letter B, I want to remove the middle element. Well, so far the methods that we've worked with so far will not help us because they're always the beginning and the end.
So now I want to use a splice method to remove the the letter B. So what I'll do is call foo dot splice one comma one. And it's a little more going on here than we've discussed before. So let's take a look at it. What's happening here is that the first argument is the position to start at this is where we're going to start working. And keep in mind that JavaScript arrays are zero based.
So in this case, the number one represents the letter B, because the numbers zero would represent the letter A. So we're saying started start at the, the one index, which is letter B. And the second argument is how many elements do we want to remove and here we're just saying one, I just want to remove them. letter B. That's it. So start at one, remove one.
So when I execute this code, what happens is the letter B is removed from the array. The array now just has the letters A and C, and it returns an array with the letter B. Why is that? Well, that's because the splice method always returns an array. Always splice method always returns an array, it could return an empty array. It could return an array with elements in it.
And we'll see exactly why that happens in our code examples, but just remember, the splice method always returns an array. But it allows you to do more than just remove elements. I can also add elements. So for example, if I would have passed a third argument, the letter X, what I'm saying is, this is the element I want to add to the to this array at the position I'm indicating. So here I'm saying, startup is at index one, which is where the letter B is removed one element, certainly letter B and insert one element which is going to be the letter X. So we're basically replacing the letter B with the letter X, I want to execute this code.
That's exactly what happens. The the array has changed from ABC to a x C, and we would get an L an array back with the letter B because the splice method always returns an array, and an array contains any elements that were removed. So let's, let's let's look at some. Let's look at a couple of code examples that I think will make this a little bit clearer.