Question

is it possible to make a regex with multiple delimiters? For example I want to split a string which can come in two forms: 1. “string1, string2, string3” or 2. “string1,string2,string3”. I’ve been trying to do this in javascript but with no success so far.

Answer 1

Just use a regex split():

var string = "part1,part2, part3, part4,    part5",
    components = string.split(/,\s*/);

JS Fiddle demo.

The reason I’ve used * rather than ? is simply because it allows for no white-space or many white-spaces. Whereas the ? matches zero-or-one white-space (which is exactly what you asked, but even so).

Incidentally, if there might possibly be white-spaces preceding the comma, then it might be worth amending the split() regex to:

var string = "part1,part2  , part3, part4,    part5",
    components = string.split(/\s*,\s*/);
console.log(components);​

JS Fiddle demo.

Which splits the supplied string on zero-or-more whitespace followed by a comma followed by zero-or-more white-space. This may, of course, be entirely unnecessary.

References:

• Regular Expressions.
• string.split().