Javascript – Why is delete not allowed in Javascript5 strict mode

The reason is that one construct:

var a = []; // Create a new empty array.
a[5] = 5;   // Perfectly legal JavaScript that resizes the array.

for (var i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
    // Iterate over numeric indexes from 0 to 5, as everyone expects.
    console.log(a[i]);
}

/* Will display:
   undefined
   undefined
   undefined
   undefined
   undefined
   5
*/

can sometimes be totally different from the other:

var a = [];
a[5] = 5;
for (var x in a) {
    // Shows only the explicitly set index of "5", and ignores 0-4
    console.log(x);
}

/* Will display:
   5
*/

Also consider that JavaScript libraries might do things like this, which will affect any array you create:

// Somewhere deep in your JavaScript library...
Array.prototype.foo = 1;

// Now you have no idea what the below code will do.
var a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
for (var x in a){
    // Now foo is a part of EVERY array and 
    // will show up here as a value of 'x'.
    console.log(x);
}

/* Will display:
   0
   1
   2
   3
   4
   foo
*/

delete will delete the object property, but will not reindex the array or update its length. This makes it appears as if it is undefined:

> myArray = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
  ["a", "b", "c", "d"]
> delete myArray[0]
  true
> myArray[0]
  undefined

Note that it is not in fact set to the value undefined, rather the property is removed from the array, making it appear undefined. The Chrome dev tools make this distinction clear by printing empty when logging the array.

> myArray[0]
  undefined
> myArray
  [empty, "b", "c", "d"]

myArray.splice(start, deleteCount) actually removes the element, reindexes the array, and changes its length.

> myArray = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
  ["a", "b", "c", "d"]
> myArray.splice(0, 2)
  ["a", "b"]
> myArray
  ["c", "d"]