how to get all the children of a node as items of an array in javascript using jQuery

for example I have the following structure:

<div class="parent">  
    <div>1st child</div>  
    <div>2nd child</div>  
    <div>3rd child</div>  
    <div>4th child</div>  
</div>

all I want is to have the text of all the children of 开发者_如何学Gothe parent div as items of an array.

the jQuery solution is preferred.

var a = $(".parent").children().map(function() { return $(this).text(); });

function get_this_text() {
    return $(this).text();
}

$(".parent div").map(get_this_text).get()

Here's it on fiddle (see result in your console): http://jsfiddle.net/C6pHS/

Optionally to the other answers could also do this if it helps you to see things more clearly. HTML:

<div class="parent">  
    <div class="child">1st child</div>  
    <div class="child">2nd child</div>  
    <div class="child">3rd child</div>  
    <div class="child">4th child</div>  
</div>

JQuery:

var childArray = $('.child');