How would I write use regexp to split a string like so:

"foo bar, foobar (bar)" => ["foo", "bar", ",", "foobar", "(", "bar", ")"]

i.e. split on whitespace + each special character should separately get included in the resulting array

How would I write use regexp to split a string like so:

"foo bar, foobar (bar)" => ["foo", "bar", ",", "foobar", "(", "bar", ")"]

i.e. split on whitespace + each special character should separately get included in the resulting array

• javascript
• regex

Share Improve this question Follow edited Jul 20, 2013 at 16:55 Casimir et Hippolyte 89.9k55 gold badges100100 silver badges130130 bronze badges asked Jul 20, 2013 at 16:50 Himanshu PHimanshu P 9,94566 gold badges3939 silver badges4646 bronze badges 3

• What language do you use? – Casimir et Hippolyte Commented Jul 20, 2013 at 16:53
• I am using JavaScript – Himanshu P Commented Jul 20, 2013 at 16:54
• What output are you looking to obtain? It would help if you didn't repeat foo-bar constantly; use apples, pears, bananas or whatever. – Andy G Commented Jul 20, 2013 at 16:55

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4 Answers 4

Sorted by: Reset to default 4

Instead of splitting, I'd do the reverse; find all matches of \w+|[^\w\s].

I would probably do something like this

var foo = []; 
"foo bar, foobar (bar)".split(/(\W)/).forEach(function(elem) {
    if (!/^\s*$/.test(elem)) { 
        foo.push(elem);
    }
}); 
// foo = (object) ['foo', 'bar', ',', 'foobar', '(', 'bar', ')']

The new array "foo" will contain all your values.

I came up with (\w+|[,()]) per http://rubular./r/BGAFLOmkgP

You can split on the following regex:

"\s|(?=\W)"

Well, this one will give you following output:

["foo", "bar", ",", "foobar", "", "(bar", ")"]

Since, Javascript doesn't support look-behinds, it wouldn't be possible here to split to break (bar into two separate elements.

A better way would be to match instead of split. All you want is to get all the substrings matching the following regex pattern:

"\w+|[^\w\s]"

To use _ as special characters, you can use:

"[^_\W]+|[^a-zA-Z0-9\s]"