How to split string by whitespace javascript

I would like to split a String but I would like to keep white space like:

var str = "my car is red";

var stringArray [];

stringArray [0] = "my";
stringArray [1] = " ";
stringArray [2] = "car";
stringArray [3] = " ";
stringArray [4] = "is";
stringArray [5] = " ";
stringArray [6] = "red";

How I can proceed to do that?

Thanks !

asked Oct 17, 2014 at 13:02

Using regex:

var str   = "my car is red";
var stringArray = str.split(/(\s+)/);

console.log(stringArray); // ["my", " ", "car", " ", "is", " ", "red"] 

\s matches any character that is a whitespace, adding the plus makes it greedy, matching a group starting with characters and ending with whitespace, and the next group starts when there is a character after the whitespace etc.

answered Oct 17, 2014 at 13:06

chridamchridam

97k21 gold badges223 silver badges227 bronze badges

5

You could split the string on the whitespace and then re-add it, since you know its in between every one of the entries.

var string = "text to split";
    string = string.split(" ");
var stringArray = new Array();
for(var i =0; i < string.length; i++){
    stringArray.push(string[i]);
    if(i != string.length-1){
        stringArray.push(" ");
    }
}

Update: Removed trailing space.

answered Oct 17, 2014 at 13:04

somethingheresomethinghere

15.6k2 gold badges27 silver badges42 bronze badges

3

For split string by space like in Python lang, can be used:

var w = "hello    my brothers    ;";
w.split(/(\s+)/).filter( function(e) { return e.trim().length > 0; } );

output:

["hello", "my", "brothers", ";"]

or similar:

w.split(/(\s+)/).filter( e => e.trim().length > 0)

(output some)

answered Sep 21, 2016 at 22:36

iqmakeriqmaker

2,05324 silver badges22 bronze badges

2

You can just split on the word boundary using \b. See MDN

"\b: Matches a zero-width word boundary, such as between a letter and a space."

You should also make sure it is followed by whitespace \s. so that strings like "My car isn't red" still work:

var stringArray = str.split(/\b(\s)/);

The initial \b is required to take multiple spaces into account, e.g. my car is red

EDIT: Added grouping

answered Oct 17, 2014 at 13:07

RhumborlRhumborl

16k4 gold badges36 silver badges45 bronze badges

2

Although this is not supported by all browsers, if you use capturing parentheses inside your regular expression then the captured input is spliced into the result.

If separator is a regular expression that contains capturing parentheses, then each time separator is matched, the results (including any undefined results) of the capturing parentheses are spliced into the output array. [reference)

So:

var stringArray = str.split(/(\s+)/);
                             ^   ^
//

Output:

["my", " ", "car", " ", "is", " ", "red"]

This collapses consecutive spaces in the original input, but otherwise I can't think of any pitfalls.

answered Oct 17, 2014 at 13:13

In case you're sure you have only one space between two words, you can use this one

str.replace(/\s+/g, ' ').split(' ')

so you replace one space by two, the split by space

answered Oct 26, 2020 at 11:32

str.split(' ').join('§ §').split('§');

answered Jul 11, 2016 at 20:40

EsgerEsger

1,12911 silver badges17 bronze badges

How do you split a string in white space?

How do I split a space in JavaScript?

Can we split string in JavaScript?

Which JavaScript method is used to break a string on a character or whitespace?