javascript remove array from array

Assuming you're on a browser that has Array.prototype.filter and Array.prototype.indexOf, you could use this:

var c = a.filter(function(item) {
    return b.indexOf(item) === -1;
});

If the browser in question does not have those methods, you may be able to shim them.

For code that would work in all browsers, you would have to manually find each element from b in a and remove it.

var a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
var b = [2, 3];

var result = [], found;
for (var i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
    found = false;
    // find a[i] in b
    for (var j = 0; j < b.length; j++) {
        if (a[i] == b[j]) {
            found = true;
            break;
        }
    }
    if (!found) {
        result.push(a[i]);
    }
}
// The array result now contains just the items from a that are not in b

Working example here: http://jsfiddle.net/jfriend00/xkBzR/

And, here's a version that could be faster for large arrays because it puts everything into an object for hashed lookups rather than brute force array searching:

var a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
var b = [2, 3];

function filterArray(src, filt) {
    var temp = {}, i, result = [];
    // load contents of filt into object keys for faster lookup
    for (i = 0; i < filt.length; i++) {
        temp[filt[i]] = true;
    }

    // go through src
    for (i = 0; i < src.length; i++) {
        if (!(src[i] in temp)) {
            result.push(src[i]);
        }
    }
    return(result);
}

var filtered = filterArray(a, b);

Working example here: http://jsfiddle.net/jfriend00/LUcx6/

Here an implementation for try works in all browsers:

if('filter' in Array == false) {
    Array.prototype.filter = 
        function(callback) {
            if(null == this || void 0 == this) {
                return;
             }
            var filtered = [];
            for(i = 0, len = this.length; i < len; i++) {
                    var tmp = this[i];
                    if(callback(tmp)) {
                        filtered.push(tmp);
                     }
             }
                return filtered;
       }
  }

a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]; 
b = [2, 3]; 

var c = a.filter(function(item) { /*implementation of icktoofay */
    return b.indexOf(item) === -1;
});