I am new to javaScript and is not able to understand why split function is behaving differently just by assigning it to a variable.
For example,
var str = "This is text 1";
var ani = str.split(" ");
console.log(ani[0]);
The above code gives the whole word "this" , whereas for the below code
var str = "This is text 1";
str.split(" ");
console.log(str[0]);
It gives result as the first character of the string.
Why didn't the later code result was same to the first one?
String functions in javascript don't modify the string in place. So setting the result of str.split(" ") to a variable works, but the value of str is not changed.
str.split(" ") does not modify the str variable, it returns a new array containing the result. str still contains the original string, and str[0] is the first character of that string.
If you want to do it without assigning to a variable, apply the subscript to the function call:
console.log(str.split(" ")[0]);
.split() doesn't mutate / affect the variable it is called on, it instead returns a new value - which you have assigned to ani. The confusing thing for the example you have is that strings can be accessed like arrays. So str[index] will give the character at that position.
splitdoes not modify the string being split.str.split(" ");to anything. You should save ti likelet anyother = str.split(" ");