Question

Does anyone know how I can find the sub-string "<br/>" in a string and check if there’s a space before or after it? I’ve been using this to check if the string contains the sub-string:

if (str.indexOf('<br/>') !== -1) {
}

But how would I go about checking before or after it for a space? Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

var idx = str.indexOf('<br/>');

var hasSpaces = idx > 0 &&
    (str.charAt(idx -1) === ' ' || str.charAt(idx + 5) === ' ');

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Edit: this solution works if you also care about the index of of the <br/> even when there are no spaces. If you don’t care about the <br/> when there are no spaces, then @David’s solution is better (although note that \b matches any word boundary, so you may want to make it stricter, depending on your needs).

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Another edit: I just realized several of the regex solutions offered will only work if there is a space before AND after. Here’s an example that will work with a space before or after or on both sides:

var match = str.match(/\s?<br\/>\s?/);
var hasSpaces = match && match[0].length > 5;