I’m looking for [a, b, c, "d, e, f", g, h]to turn into an array of 6 elements: a, b, c, “d,e,f”, g, h. I’m trying to do this through Javascript. This is what I have so far:
str = str.split(/,+|"[^"]+"/g);
But right now it’s splitting out everything that’s in the double-quotes, which is incorrect.
Edit: Okay sorry I worded this question really poorly. I’m being given a string not an array.
var str = 'a, b, c, "d, e, f", g, h';
And I want to turn that into an array using something like the “split” function.
Answer
Here’s what I would do.
var str = 'a, b, c, "d, e, f", g, h';
var arr = str.match(/(".*?"|[^",s]+)(?=s*,|s*$)/g);
/* will match:
(
".*?" double quotes + anything but double quotes + double quotes
| OR
[^",s]+ 1 or more characters excl. double quotes, comma or spaces of any kind
)
(?= FOLLOWED BY
s*, 0 or more empty spaces and a comma
| OR
s*$ 0 or more empty spaces and nothing else (end of string)
)
*/
arr = arr || [];
// this will prevent JS from throwing an error in
// the below loop when there are no matches
for (var i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) console.log('arr['+i+'] =',arr[i]);