Question

I am trying to split a text from a textbox using some characters as operators. I have a grouping operator (“) and a “AND” operator (+), pretty much like google does. So, this text:

box +box +"box" "box" "is.a.box" +"is.a.box" +"is a box"

In the textbox is returning this:

myArray[0] = box
myArray[1] = +box
myArray[2] = +
myArray[3] = "box"
myArray[4] = "box"
myArray[5] = "is.a.box"
myArray[6] = +
myArray[7] = "is.a.box"
myArray[8] = +
myArray[9] = "is a box"

Instead I want it to return this:

myArray[0] = box
myArray[1] = +box
myArray[2] = +"box"
myArray[3] = "box"
myArray[4] = "is.a.box"
myArray[5] = +"is.a.box"
myArray[6] = +"is a box"

This is the regexp I’m using:

/[\+\w]+|"[^"]+"/g

How can I split by ” and + symbols together?

Answer 1

Have a look at this:

str.match(/\+?(?:"[^"]*"|[^\s+]+)/g)

That will start with a + if possible. Then it will try to match a ". If it can, it will take as many non-" characters as possible and the final ". If there is no " it will just take in as many non-space, non-+ characters as possible.

This is pretty much what you had, except that I took out an optional + in front of both possible cases.

One more addition. If box"box" should result in two match box and "box" use this:

str.match(/\+?(?:"[^"]*"|[^\s+"]+)/g)