Question

What’s the easiest way to retrieve 2 arrays from 1 txt file with javascript?

so

Steve~kid
Bob~adult
Chris~kid

becomes

Names array

Steve, Bob, Chris

&
Type array

kid, adult, kid

Answer 1

By default you can’t access system files from the browser, although there are some options such as the fileReader API in some modern browsers and of course, Node JS, but that’s for server stuff.

Note: If the files are on your server then you can do an AJAX request.

But assuming you find out how to get the contents of the file into a string variable, you can create the arrays like:

var str = 'Steve~kid\nBob~adult\nChris~kid', // string from file
    lines = str.split('\n'),
    names = [],
    types = [];

lines.forEach(function( v ) {
  var a = v.split('~');
  names.push( a[0] );
  types.push( a[1] );
});

console.log( names ); //=> ['Steve', 'Bob', 'Chris']
console.log( types ); //=> ['kid', 'adult', 'kid']