Shift

Use .shift to remove the first item of an array.

For example:

var array = [1, 2, 3, 4];
array.shift();

array results in:

[2, 3, 4]

Pop

Further .pop is used to remove the last item from an array.

For example:

var array = [1, 2, 3];
array.pop();

array results in:

[1, 2]

Both methods return the removed item;

Splice

Use .splice() to remove a series of elements from an array. .splice() accepts two parameters, the starting index, and an optional number of elements to delete. If the second parameter is left out .splice() will remove all elements from the starting index through the end of the array.

For example:

var array = [1, 2, 3, 4];
array.splice(1, 2);

leaves array containing:

[1, 4]

The return of array.splice() is a new array containing the removed elements. For the example above, the return would be: