Question

So what I am doing is taking a string and splitting it at all the spaces. I already did this using .split(" ")[0/1/2] but how do I then take those individual strings and determine the length? The reason I am doing this is to check that string if it has a middle initial or not. Given a name like this John M Smith, I can determine what the words are but if somebody does not enter a middle initial, the last name will now be placed in the middle initial variable. How would I go about doing this or am I tackling it all wrong? Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

Use the length of the array that holds the separated strings:

var separateStrings = stringVar.split(' ');
var numOfNames = separateStrings.length;

For example, with the following code:

var i = document.getElementById('names'); // assuming an input element of id="names"

i.onkeydown = function(e){
    if (e.keyCode == 13){
        var stringVar = this.value,
            separatedNames = stringVar.split(' '),
            numOfNames = separatedNames.length;

        alert(numOfNames);
    }

};​

JS Fiddle demo.