Trying out Underscore on Node.js

Underscore is a library that nicely rounds out JavaScript’s rather limited standard library. Thanks to the Node Package Manager, it’s very simple to install on Node.js:

    $ npm install underscore

Then you can use it in code as follows:

    var _ = require("underscore");

If you want to play with Underscore interactively in the Node.js REPL, you can’t give it the name _, because that is used by the REPL, to hold the previous input:

    > 3 + 4
    7
    > _
    7

Solution: choose another name.

    > var u = require("underscore");
    > u.uniq([5, 3, 5, 5, 3, 1])
    [ 5, 3, 1 ]