Question

ok, I guess the code says it all.

//I have this string.
var str = '"Watch out" "for the" "rock!"'
//this is one of the many patterns that I tried
res=str.match(/"(.*)" "(.*)" "(.*)"/g)

I want an array like: res=["Watch out","for the","rock!"]
How can I do that?

Answer 1

Like this:

var str = '"Watch out" "for the" "rock!"'
res=str.match(/"(.*?)" "(.*?)" "(.*?)"/)
res.shift()

You need to remove the g flag because with that flag you will get a list of matches and not the list of groups for a single match. Also, you should specify your groups as non-greedy (quantifier *?), otherwise they might match too much. Finally, remove the first entry from the array using res.shift() – the first entry is the entire matched string and you want only the groups.