How do I split a string in JavaScript?
We can use JavaScript’s String.prototype.split()
method. When called on a string, this will split the string at every instance of the provided separator, discard the separator, and return an array of substrings. The following code provides an example:
const myString = "This is a sentence."; const words = myString.split(" "); // split on single space characters console.log(words); // will output ["This", "is", "a", "sentence."]
The separator can be a string or a regular expression, so we could also do something like this:
const myString = "This is a sentence."; const words = myString.split(/[ t]/); // split on single space characters and lowercase t's console.log(words); // will output ["This", "is", "a", "sen", "ence."]
If we would like to retain the separator when splitting, we can use a regular expression with a positive lookahead assertion, as below:
const myString = "This is a sentence."; const words = myString.split(/(?= )/); // split on but retain single space characters console.log(words); // will output ["This", " is", " a", " sentence."]
We can also truncate the final array by setting the optional limit
parameter:
const myString = "This is a sentence."; const words = myString.split(" "); // split on single space characters words.length = 3; console.log(words); // will output ["This", "is", "a"]