Javascript objects are excellent for this purpose, since they are essentially key/value stores:
// Words to match
var words = ["dell", "ledl", "abc", "cba"];
// The output object
var anagrams = {};
for (var i in words) {
var word = words[i];
// sort the word like you've already described
var sorted = sortWord(word);
// If the key already exists, we just push
// the new word on the the array
if (anagrams[sorted] != null) {
anagrams[sorted].push(word);
}
// Otherwise we create an array with the word
// and insert it into the object
else {
anagrams[sorted] = [ word ];
}
}
// Output result
for (var sorted in anagrams) {
var words = anagrams[sorted];
var sep = ",";
var out = "";
for (var n in words) {
out += sep + words[n];
sep = "";
}
document.writeln(sorted + ": " + out + "<br />");
}