Dynamically creating keys in a JavaScript associative array

All the documentation I’ve found so far is to update keys that are already created:

 arr['key'] = val;

I have a string like this: " name = oscar "

And I want to end up with something like this:

{ name: 'whatever' }

That is, split the string and get the first element, and then put that in a dictionary.

Code

var text=" name = oscar "
var dict = new Array();
var keyValuePair = text.split(' = ');
dict[ keyValuePair[0] ] = 'whatever';
alert( dict ); // Prints nothing.