reading GET data

reading GET data

Does Jquery or regular javascript give you a simple function for reading GET data?

in regular javascript you could use
var pathname = window.location.pathname;
followed by string manipulating functions to remove everything before the "?"
and to split the remaining string into its key > value components by splitting it at
each "=" and "&" character and building an array of keys and values each time.

so it is theoretically possible

but is there a quick way?