JavaScript: Splitting a string without splitting a substring

Question

I have a string that looks like this:

var str = "'1vK3KfqgSHqv5Y0066FnIY',#41,$,$,(#149,#488,#862,#945,#1028,#1249),#114";

Usually I would just:

str.split(",");

But this will result in:

[
    "'1vK3KfqgSHqv5Y0066FnIY'", 
    "#41", 
    "$", 
    "$", 
    "(#149", 
    "#488", 
    "#862", 
    "#945", 
    "#1028", 
    "#1249)", 
    "#114"
]

Whereas the desired result is:

[
    "'1vK3KfqgSHqv5Y0066FnIY'", 
    "#41", 
    "$", 
    "$", 
    "(#149, #488, #862, #945, #1028, #1249)", 
    "#114"
]

How would I achieve this?

what if the string would be "'1vK3KfqgSHqv5Y0066FnIY',(#1,(#41,$),$,(#149,#488,#862,#945,#1028,#1249),#11),#114" ? How should look the expected result? — RomanPerekhrest
– RomanPerekhrest, Commented Jul 21, 2016 at 13:47
You'd need to write some sort of customer parser to account for parentheses. — Christopher Schneider
– Christopher Schneider, Commented Jul 21, 2016 at 13:53
@RomanPerekhrest In that case it would be an array consisting of 3 records: [ "'1vK3KfqgSHqv5Y0066FnIY'", "(#1,(#41,$),$,(#149,#488,#862,#945,#1028,#1249),#11)",‌ ‌"#114" ] But I do not think the IFC STEP file (which this is based on) has that kind of structure. — GauteR
– GauteR, Commented Jul 21, 2016 at 13:55

Felix · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-21 13:48:59Z

3

Hi here would be a regex

str.match(/(\(.*?\)|[^\(,\s]+)(?=\s*,|\s*$)/g)

which results in

[ '\'1vK3KfqgSHqv5Y0066FnIY\'',
  '#41',
  '$',
  '$',
  '(#149,#488,#862,#945,#1028,#1249)',
  '#114' ]

answered Jul 21, 2016 at 13:48

Felix

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2 Comments

Mohammad Over a year ago

Provide demo to checking result.

GauteR Over a year ago

Seems not everything had been copied right to Regexr, now it works. Thanks!

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