Question

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JavaScript Split without losing character

I have a string:

"<foo>abcdefg</bar><foo>abcdefg</bar><foo>abcdefg</bar><foo>abcdefg</bar>"

I want to separate all instances of “abcdefg” into an array like this:

["<foo>abcdefg</bar>", "<foo>abcdefg</bar>", "<foo>abcdefg</bar>", "<foo>abcdefg</bar>"];

I try:

var str="<foo>abcdefg</bar><foo>abcdefg</bar><foo>abcdefg</bar><foo>abcdefg</bar>";
var Array_Of_FooBars = str.split("</bar>"); 

alert(Array_Of_FooBars);

But it returns:

["<foo>abcdefg", "<foo>abcdefg", "<foo>abcdefg", "<foo>abcdefg",]

It is removing the separator ”. I don’t want that.

How can I use split and not lose the separators from the string?

Thanks.
Ken

Answer 1

Try this. It’s not a perfect solution, but it should work in most cases.

str.split(/(?=<foo>)/)

That is, split it in the position before each opening tag.

EDIT: You could also do it with match(), like so:

str.match(/<foo>.*?<\/bar>/g)