How to construct a regular expression to split this text?

Question

Hello everyone I am writing a script, the main idea is that I have a text with a fixed structure as follows:

"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGWO.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGX4.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGX6.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGX8.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGXA.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGXC.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"

I want to process that text, I want to split that text by the following symbols: |"~, pipe double quote and ~, I want to create an array to store that values, as follows:

splitWords = [RBD,X,RBD,C,92173,GJHGWO.NAYE,SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa]

In order to achieve it I tried:

var splitWords = document.getElementById("texto").value.split("|");
document.write(stringArray.toString());

and I get:

"RBD,X,RBD,C,92173~GJHGWO.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa" "RBD,X,RBD,C,92173~GJHGX4.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa" "RBD,X,RBD,C,92173~GJHGX6.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa" "RBD,X,RBD,C,92173~GJHGX8.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa" "RBD,X,RBD,C,92173~GJHGXA.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa" "RBD,X,RBD,C,92173~GJHGXC.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"

The problem with this is that this is just splitting the text by the pipe, I would like to split it by the others symbols too, in order to get my desired output. The complete code looks as follows:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<body>
<p id="demo"></p>

<textarea cols=150 rows=15 id="texto">
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGWO.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGX4.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGX6.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGX8.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGXA.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGXC.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
</textarea>

<script>
var splitWords = document.getElementById("texto").value.split("|");
document.write(splitWords.toString());
</script>

</body>
</html>

I would like to appreciate any suggestion of a regular expression to achieve this.

You ask for a regex to split text by specific characters, but this won't solve your problem: you want to get a multidimensional array containing entries for each line where each line is separated into two "words|with|your|data" by a space. — le_m, Jun 01 '16 at 17:49
@user138717 Are you sure that your individual values can never contain any of the characters used for splitting, e. g. instead of "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa" there can never be "SA BORNSiPOSSTHRa" etc.? If not, better use a more refined regex matching strategy. — le_m, Jun 01 '16 at 19:10

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 01 '16 at 18:08

3

Use a regular expression:

str = '"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGWO.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"';
str.split(/[\|"~\s]+/).filter(Boolean); // Output: ["RBD", "X", "RBD", "C", "92173", "GJHGWO.NAYE", "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"]

If you want to filter the period as well, add it in the square brackets of the regex with a backslash to escape it.

answered Jun 01 '16 at 18:08

Makaze

1,076
7
13

nifty use of Boolean constructor – Shanimal Jun 01 '16 at 18:12

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 01 '16 at 18:10

Ok, let's begin... Get textarea value and trim it...

var splitWords = document.getElementById("texto").value.trim();

First of all you need to replace " symbol...

splitWords = splitWords.replace(/"/g, '');

Then split the lines because it's like table rows...

splitWords = splitWords.split('\n');

Then split each row by posible delimeters |, ~, ...

splitWords.forEach(function(rowValue,rowIndex) {
    splitWords[rowIndex] = rowValue.split(/[|~ ]/);
    console.log(rowIndex, splitWords[rowIndex]);
});

Console.log output will be:

0 ["RBD", "X", "RBD", "C", "92173", "GJHGWO.NAYE", "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"]
1 ["RBD", "X", "RBD", "C", "92173", "GJHGX4.NAYE", "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"]
2 ["RBD", "X", "RBD", "C", "92173", "GJHGX6.NAYE", "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"]
3 ["RBD", "X", "RBD", "C", "92173", "GJHGX8.NAYE", "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"]
4 ["RBD", "X", "RBD", "C", "92173", "GJHGXA.NAYE", "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"]
5 ["RBD", "X", "RBD", "C", "92173", "GJHGXC.NAYE", "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"]

Then do whatever you want with 2-dimensional array splitWords...

Thanks I really appreciate the support, this was very helpful. — neo33, Jun 01 '16 at 18:48

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 01 '16 at 18:46

My proposal is:

<p id="demo"></p>

<textarea cols=150 rows=15 id="texto">
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGWO.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGX4.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGX6.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGX8.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGXA.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
"RBD|X|RBD|C|92173~GJHGXC.NAYE" "SAMBORNSiPOSSSTHRa"
</textarea>

<script>
    var lines = document.getElementById("texto").value.split('\n');
    var splitWords  = lines.filter(function(v) { return v.length > 0})
                           .map(function(currentValue, index) {
        return currentValue.trim().replace(/^"([^"]+)"\s"([^"]+)"$/, '$1$2').split(/[|~]/);
    });
    console.log(JSON.stringify(splitWords, null, 4));
</script>

Thanks this was really helpful, I appreciate the support. – neo33 Jun 01 '16 at 18:51 — neo33, Jun 01 '16 at 18:51

How to construct a regular expression to split this text?

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