Using JavaScript I'm trying to split a paragraph into it's sentences using regular expressions. My regular expression doesn't account for a sentence being inside brackets and I would like to keep the delimiter.

I've put an example of the code in jsFiddle here

Using JavaScript I'm trying to split a paragraph into it's sentences using regular expressions. My regular expression doesn't account for a sentence being inside brackets and I would like to keep the delimiter.

I've put an example of the code in jsFiddle here

• javascript
• regex

Share Improve this question Follow edited Jun 27, 2012 at 15:50 pb2q 59.7k1919 gold badges150150 silver badges152152 bronze badges asked Jun 27, 2012 at 15:46 Mike MengellMike Mengell 2,39822 gold badges2121 silver badges3535 bronze badges 1

• Does this answer your question? Javascript and regex: split string and keep the separator – Liam Commented May 12, 2023 at 11:35

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3 Answers 3

Sorted by: Reset to default 4

I took the match approach rather than split. It could be tighter (e.g. what if a sentence ends with ..., etc).

text.match(/\(?[A-Z][^\.]+[\.!\?]\)?(\s+|$)/g);

http://jsfiddle/DepKF/1/

@Utkanos You idea is good, but I think replace may better:

text.replace(/\(?[A-Z][^\.]+[\.!\?]\)?/g, function (sentence) {
    output += '<p>'+ sentence + '</p>';
});

http://jsfiddle/juGT7/1/

You no need to loop again.

use the (?=pattern) lookahead pattern in the regex example

var string = '500x500-11*90~1+1';
string = string.replace(/(?=[$-/:-?{-~!"^_`\[\]])/gi, ",");
string = string.split(",");

this will give you the following result.

[ '500x500', '-11', '*90', '~1', '+1' ]

Can also be directly split

string = string.split(/(?=[$-/:-?{-~!"^_`\[\]])/gi);

giving the same result

[ '500x500', '-11', '*90', '~1', '+1' ]