 <p>You can split on an empty string:</p> <pre><code>var chars = "overpopulation".split(''); </code></pre> <hr> <p>If you just want to access a string in an array-like fashion, you can do that without <code>split</code>:</p> <pre><code>var s = "overpopulation"; for (var i = 0; i &lt; s.length; i++) { console.log(s.charAt(i)); } </code></pre> <hr> <p>You can also access each character with its index in the normal fashion:</p> <pre><code>var s = "overpopulation"; console.log(s[3]); // logs 'r' </code></pre>