Question

I have a string

var str = "2 Days, 2 Hours 10 Minutes";

if I :

str.split(/Days/);

I get:

["2 ", ", 2 Hours 10 Minutes"]

So I think I can use string.split to split out my string and get the “days”, “hours” and “minutes” with this method.

However, what do I do when I sometimes have “s” or no “s”, for example:

var str = "1 Day, 2 Hours 10 Minutes";

Here my string is “1 Day” not “2 Days” so I don’t have the “s” on the “day” value. Is there a way to split a string on

Day(s)
Hour(s)
Minute(s)

Answer 1

You’re using a Regular Expression to do the split, so simply place a question mark after the ‘s’ to make it optional:

str.split(/Days?/);

You probably also want to make it case-insensitive by adding the i flag to the Regex:

str.split(/days?/i);

You could also do the whole thing with a single line using the match string method (instead of split) like this:

("2 Days, 3 hours, 5 minutes").match(/(\d+)\s*days?\,?\s*(\d+)\s*hours?\,?\s*(\d+)\s*minutes?/i)

That will return an array like this:

["2 Days, 3 hours, 5 minutes", "2", "3", "5"]

So the items in positions 1, 2 and 3 are the days, hours and minutes respectively.

To break that Regex down into english:

• (captured group, i.e. array item 1) 1 or more digits
• zero or more whitespace characters
• day
• optional s
• optional comma
• zero or more whitespace characters
  … and repeat for hours and minutes.

Check the docs for regex matching on strings here, and great docs on how to use regular expressions here.