Question

I understand the .split() function quite well. But what I can seem to figure out is how to split in certain places but not in others. Sounds confusing? Well I mean for example, lets say I use .split(",") on the following string:

div:(li,div),div

Is it possible to split it so that only the commas ouside of the parentheses get split.

So the string above with the split method should return:

['div:(li,div)', 'div']

Of course at the moment it is also splitting the first comma inside of the parentheses, returning:

['div:(li', 'div)', 'div']

Is there some way to make this work like I desire?

Answer 1

If your expected strings are not going to become more complicated than this, you don’t have to worry about writing code to parse them. Regex will work just fine.

http://jsfiddle.net/dC5HN/1/

var str = "div:(li,div),div:(li,div),div";
var parts = str.split(/,(?=(?:[^\)]|\([^\)]*\))*$)/g);
console.log(parts);

outputs:

["div:(li,div)", "div:(li,div)", "div"]