javascript split function

Question

can i give more than one parameter to the split function in javascript to remove more than one thing and put it into array? for expamle:

 var str= "This is Javascript String Split Function example ";
 var wordArray=str.split(" ");

this will give me each word separately

in addition of this result, i want to remove "is" and "this" from the array, so can i put in the split function many parameter to remove from the beginning " " & "is" & "this" ? or should i use another function than split() ?

Answer 1

there are many ways to achieve what you want. Basically you want to remove is and this

so either you can do this:

a. If words you want to remove are always the first and the second one then

 var filteredArray = str.split(" ").splice(2);

b. If words you want to remove can be anywhere in the string

var filteredArray = str.replace(/this|is/g, function(w){
 switch(w){
 case 'this':
 return '' ;
 case 'is':
 return '';
 }
 }).trim().split(' ');

c. There is one more lame way to do this.

var str= "This is Javascript String Split Function example ";
var parts = str.split(' ');
var clean = [];
for (var i = 0; i < parts.length; i++) {
 var part = parts[i];
 if (part !== "This" && part !=="is")
 clean.push(part);
}

d. using simple regex to replace multiple words

var str= "This is Javascript String Split Function example ";
 var words = ['This', 'is'];
 var text = str.replace(new RegExp('(' + words.join('|') + ')', 'g'), '').split(' '); 

based on your need you can go for any one of them.

references : this , this and this

• David Hellsing: The only one of these three examples that will work is the first.
• Manish Mishra: @David my apologies, last one, it was split by comma, anyways they work now.

Answer 2

String.split takes two arguments, a separator and a limit. So basically you can remove entries from the end of the resulting array (limit the array), but not from the beginning.

Read more here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String/split

However, you can chain the resulting array with other array prototypes, so you can easily add a Array.splice to do what you want:

var wordArray = str.split(" ").splice(2);

If you want to specifically remove certain words, use Array.filter:

var wordArray = str.split(' ').filter(function(word) {
 return !/(is|this)/i.test(word);
});

• elianore: thank you! but if "is" & "this" are not in the beginning if it is for example one in the beginning and one in the middle what should i do?

Answer 3

I wouldn't try to use split to remove things from a string. You should use "replace" to remove them, then split after.

var wordArray = str.replace(/is|this/g, '').split(" ");

That should remove "is" and "this" and then you can split it from there.

Update

Tweaked the regex just a bit. I forgot to add a g to make it get rid of all of them.

If you want it to be case-insensitive (i.e., match This, Is, etc.), add the i switch after the g.

FIDDLE

• David Hellsing: That is not a correct regexp for the OP’s example, you’ll end up with ["Th", "is", ...
• elianore: @samanime thank you!! but it didn't remove both "is" and "this" , it removes one of them only
• samanime: Updated to add the g tag so it gets rid of all of them. I'm not sure why David thinks it'll get what he said it would. It seems to work just fine in jsfiddle.
• elianore: @samanime thank you!! but i didn't understand how can i make it case-insensitive? can you plzzz write it here for me :)
• samanime: var wordArray = str.replace(/is|this/gi, '').split(" ")