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copied!<p>jQuery objects are array-like, so look and behave a lot like arrays, but are in fact just custom objects made to roughly equate to a collection of DOM nodes (except with added functionality). All the array-like functionality - length, slice() etc.. - is in fact added manually to the jQuery prototype (for which <code>jQuery.fn</code> is an alias), sometimes by calling an array function with the jQuery object as context </p> <pre><code> slice = Array.prototype.slice, ... slice: function() { return this.pushStack( slice.apply( this, arguments ), "slice", slice.call(arguments).join(",") ); }, </code></pre> <p>and sometimes by writing it from scratch. Look at the <a href="http://robflaherty.github.com/jquery-annotated-source/docs/01-core.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">annotated code</a> (probably a very useful resource for you - it covers v1.6.2 but I don't think anything too drastic has changed since then, except maybe the addition of $.callbacks) to see that <code>this.length</code> is set manually e.g.</p> <pre><code>if ( selector === "body" && !context && document.body ) { this.context = document; this[0] = document.body; this.selector = selector; this.length = 1; return this; } </code></pre> <p>the <code>jQuery.buildFragment()</code> method is also fundamental to how jQuery objects containing larger collections of DOM nodes are constructed.</p> <p>So to sum up, jQuery doesn't use arrays, it just looks like it does because much native array functionality has been replicated as properties of the jQuery prototype.</p>

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