Question

This is my string

 var str = "Here is some &text:also , here is &another:one"
 var myRegExp = /\b\s(\&){1}(\w)+(\:){1}(\w)+\s?\b/g
 str.match(myRegExp)
 //[" &text:also", " &another:one"]

Works as expected till now, the problem is with the splitting

str.split(myRegExp)

Expectations: [“Here is some” , “, here is”]
Reality [“Here is some”, “&”, “t”, “:”, “o”, ” , here is”, “&”, “r”, “:”, “e”, “”]

What could be the reason for this ? I can extract my required array by looping over and splitting at the matches, isnt there any shortcut apart from that ?

Answer 1

This is because the regex engine is also including the group values into the result..use (?:)

So the regex to split would be

/\b\s(?:\&){1}(?:\w)+(?:\:){1}(?:\w)+\s?\b/g

Or there is no need of grouping it at all

/\b\s\&{1}\w+\:{1}\w+\s?\b/g