How can I write to a file in array notation using Node.js

Question

I'm trying to split text into an array and then ultimately create a new file with the contents of that array.

However, when I do this, the text file contains a comma-delimited list instead of using array notation.

Here is the code so far:

var input = "4 Every Dog Must Have His 66 Every Day,";

var lorem = function(text) {
  var textArray = input.split(' ');

  for (var i = textArray.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
    if (textArray[i].match(/(\d+)$/)) {
      textArray.splice(i, 1);
    }
  }

  return textArray;

};

output = lorem(input);

var fs = require('fs');
fs.writeFile("test", output, function(err) {
    if(err) {
        console.log(err);
    } else {
        console.log("The file was saved!");
    }
});

Jacob Krall · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-21 22:13:38Z

3

writeFile expects data to be a String or a Buffer, so it is printing the .toString() representation of your array. This looks something like "Every,Dog,Must"....

Wrap it with JSON.stringify(output) to get a nice JSON representation "['Every','Dog','Must',....]".

edited Feb 21, 2014 at 22:13

answered Feb 21, 2014 at 22:02

Jacob Krall

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Comments

dthree · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-21 22:00:38Z

2

What do you mean by array notation? Isn't that a comma delimited string with brackets? Try this.

output = "[" + output.join(', ') + "]";

answered Feb 21, 2014 at 22:00

dthree

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1 Comment

Andrew Landry Over a year ago

This totally works, but I think the most correct answer is using JSON.stringify(output).

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