diff --git a/src/showdown.js b/src/showdown.js
index 28d715e..4d633dc 100644
--- a/src/showdown.js
+++ b/src/showdown.js
@@ -100,9 +100,9 @@ this.makeHtml = function(text) {
 	// from other articles when generating a page which contains more than
 	// one article (e.g. an index page that shows the N most recent
 	// articles):
-	g_urls = new Array();
-	g_titles = new Array();
-	g_html_blocks = new Array();
+	g_urls = {};
+	g_titles = {};
+	g_html_blocks = [];
 
 	// attacklab: Replace ~ with ~T
 	// This lets us use tilde as an escape char to avoid md5 hashes
@@ -1089,7 +1089,7 @@ var _FormParagraphs = function(text) {
 	text = text.replace(/\n+$/g,"");
 
 	var grafs = text.split(/\n{2,}/g);
-	var grafsOut = new Array();
+	var grafsOut = [];
 
 	//
 	// Wrap <p> tags.
@@ -1208,16 +1208,9 @@ var _EncodeEmailAddress = function(addr) {
 //  mailing list: <http://tinyurl.com/yu7ue>
 //
 
-	// attacklab: why can't javascript speak hex?
-	function char2hex(ch) {
-		var hexDigits = '0123456789ABCDEF';
-		var dec = ch.charCodeAt(0);
-		return(hexDigits.charAt(dec>>4) + hexDigits.charAt(dec&15));
-	}
-
 	var encode = [
 		function(ch){return "&#"+ch.charCodeAt(0)+";";},
-		function(ch){return "&#x"+char2hex(ch)+";";},
+		function(ch){return "&#x"+ch.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)+";";},
 		function(ch){return ch;}
 	];