Split a string in javascript with multiple separators and keep them

Question

I would like to split a string like that:

"'Hi, how are you?' he said."

in this array:

["'", "Hi", ",", " ", "how", " ", "are", " ", "you", "?", "'", " ", "he", " ", "said", "."]

in my js script. I tried with some regexp, but I'm not very good at using it. Can anyone help me?

VisioN · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-02 15:08:10Z

3

This is what I'd probably use:

"'Hi, how are you?' he said.".match(/\w+|./g);

It performs a global match for words (\w+) and other characters (.) in the given string.

answered Jul 2, 2014 at 15:08

VisioN

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3 Comments

Exactly what I needed. Thank you, I'll accept your answer asap.

Anyway, I've noticed that with this regex I've lost all the \n characters in my string, any suggestion to keep them?

@Federinik Just add the \n to the other characters group. Can also be done with /\w+|\W/g.

Harpreet Singh · Accepted Answer · 2014-07-02 16:38:56Z

2

"'Hi, how are you?' he said.".match(/\w+|\W/g)

//output
["'", "Hi", ",", " ", "how", " ", "are", " ", "you", "?", "'", " ", "he", " ", "said", "."]

Explanation

\w+ - For Matching Group of Characters

\W - For Matching Non-Character

| - Or operator between above two (either a Character or a non character)

answered Jul 2, 2014 at 16:20

Harpreet Singh

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The i modifier is actuall not necessary since you only use case-independent character classes