Question

If I try this code in firefox it works fine

 var words = String.split(new RegExp(/[\-\s]/));
 words // ["/[\-\s]/"]

The same code in IE not!

 var words = String.split(new RegExp(/[\-\s]/));
 words "Object doesn't support property or method 'split'"

Why? and what is the best way to fix it in IE?

Answer 1

Update:

The problem is that your argument is called string (all lower case), but you’re using String (with an initial capital) when you’re trying to split it. JavaScript is a case-sensitive language, string !== String.

So change this:

var words = String.split(new RegExp(/[\-\s]/)),

to this:

var words = string.split(new RegExp(/[\-\s]/)),
//          ^--- lower case s

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Original answer:

split is a function on the String.prototype (effectively, on instances of strings), not on String itself (the constructor function).

So:

var words = "some words and hyphenated-words here".split(/[\-\s]/);
console.log(words); // ["some", "words", "and", "hyphenated", "words", "here"]

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Side note: You don’t have to wrap a regular expression literal (/[\-\s]/) in new RegExp(...) unless you’re working around an old bug issue in some implementations around the global flag and caching/reuse of local literals across function calls, which isn’t relevant to split as you don’t use the g flag with it.