Develop Reference

JS Regex returning -1 & 0

I was tasked with the following:
take a string
print each of the vowels on a new line (in order) then...
print each of the consonants on a new line (in order)
The problem I found was with the regex. I originally used...
/[aeiouAEIOU\s]/g
But this would return 0 with a vowel and -1 with a consonant (so everything happened in reverse).
I really struggled to understand why and couldn't for the life of me find the answer. In the end it was simple enough to just invert the string but I want to know why this is happening the way it is. Can anyone help?
let i;
let vowels = /[^aeiouAEIOU\s]/g;
let array = [];
function vowelsAndConsonants(s) {
for(i=0;i<s.length;i++){
//if char is vowel then push to array
if(s[i].search(vowels)){
array.push(s[i]);
}
}
for(i=0;i<s.length;i++){
//if char is cons then push to array
if(!s[i].search(vowels)){
array.push(s[i]);
}
}
for(i=0;i<s.length;i++){
console.log(array[i]);
}
}
vowelsAndConsonants("javascript");

if(vowels.test(s[i])){ which will return true or false if it matches, or
if(s[i].search(vowels) !== -1){ and if(s[i].search(vowels) === -1){
is what you want if you want to fix your code.
-1 is not falsey so your if statement will not function correctly. -1 is what search returns if it doesn't find a match. It has to do this because search() returns the index position of the match, and the index could be anywhere from 0 to Infinity, so only negative numbers are available to indicate non-existent index:
MDN search() reference
Below is a RegEx that matches vowel OR any letter OR other, effectively separating out vowel, consonant, everything else into 3 capture groups. This makes it so you don't need to test character by character and separate them out manually.
Then iterates and pushes them into their respective arrays with a for-of loop.
const consonants = [], vowels = [], other = [];
const str = ";bat cat set rat. let ut cut mut,";
for(const [,cons,vow,etc] of str.matchAll(/([aeiouAEIOU])|([a-zA-Z])|(.)/g))
cons&&consonants.push(cons) || vow&&vowels.push(vow) || typeof etc === 'string'&&other.push(etc)
console.log(
consonants.join('') + '\n' + vowels.join('') + '\n' + other.join('')
)

There are a couple of inbuilt functions available:
let some_string = 'Mary had a little lamb';
let vowels = [...some_string.match(/[aeiouAEIOU\s]/g)];
let consonents = [...some_string.match(/[^aeiouAEIOU\s]/g)];
console.log(vowels);
console.log(consonents);

I think that you don't understand correctly how your regular expression works. In the brackets you have only defined a set of characters you want to match /[^aeiouAEIOU\s]/g and further by using the caret [^]as first in your group, you say that you want it to match everything but the characters in the carets. Sadly you don't provide an example of input and expected output, so I am only guessing, but I thing you could do the following:
let s = "avndexleops";
let keep_vowels = s.replace(/[^aeiouAEIOU\s]/g, '');
console.log(keep_vowels);
let keep_consonants = s.replace(/[aeiouAEIOU\s]/g, '');
console.log(keep_consonants);
Please provide example of expected input and output.

You used:
/[^aeiouAEIOU\s]/g
Instead of:
/[aeiouAEIOU\s]/g
^ means "not", so your REGEX /[^aeiouAEIOU\s]/g counts all the consonants.

Find all matches in a concatenated string of same-length words?

I have a long Javascript string with letters like :
"aapaalaakaaiartaxealpyaaraa"
This string is actually a chained list of 3-letter-words : "aap","aal","aak","aai", "art", "axe","alp", "yaa" and "raa"
In reality I have many of these strings, with different word lengths, and they can be up to 2000 words long, so I need the fastest way to get all the words that start with a certain string. So when searching for all words that start with "aa" it should return :
"aap","aal","aak" and "aai"
Is there a way to do this with a regex ? It's very important that it only matches on each 3-letter word, so matches in between words should not be counted, so "aar" should not be returned, and also not "yaa" or "raa".

The simple way:
var results = [];
for (var i = 0; i < str.length; i += 3) {
if (str.substring(i, i + 2) === "aa") {
results.push(str.substring(i, i + 3));
}
}
Don’t ask whether it’s the fastest – just check whether it’s fast enough, first. :)

How about:
var str = 'aapaalaakaaiartaxealpyaaraa';
var pattern = /^aa/;
var result = str.match(/.{3}/g).filter(function(word) {
return pattern.test(word);
});
console.log(result); //=> ["aap","aal","aak","aai"]

"aapaalaakaaiartaxealpyaaraa".replace(/\w{3}|\w+/g,function(m){return m.match(/^aa/)?m+',':','}).split(',').filter(Boolean)

How can I split this string in JavaScript?

I have strings like this:
ab
rx'
wq''
pok'''
oyu,
mi,,,,
Basically, I want to split the string into two parts. The first part should have the alphabetical characters intact, the second part should have the non-alphabetical characters.
The alphabetical part is guaranteed to be 2-3 lowercase characters between a and z; the non-alphabetical part can be any length, and is gauranteed to only be the characters , or ', but not both in the one string (e.g. eex,', will never occur).
So the result should be:
[ab][]
[rx][']
[wq]['']
[pok][''']
[oyu][,]
[mi][,,,,]
How can I do this? I'm guessing a regular expression but I'm not particularly adept at coming up with them.

Regular expressions have is a nice special called "word boundary" (\b). You can use it, well, to detect the boundary of a word, which is a sequence of alpha-numerical characters.
So all you have to do is
foo.split(/\b/)
For example,
"pok'''".split(/\b/) // ["pok", "'''"]

If you can 100% guarantee that:
Letter-strings are 2 or 3 characters
There are always one or more primes/commas
There is never any empty space before, after or in-between the letters and the marks
(aside from line-break)
You can use:
/^([a-zA-Z]{2,3})('+|,+)$/gm
var arr = /^([a-zA-Z]{2,3})('+|,+)$/gm.exec("pok'''");
arr === ["pok'''", "pok", "'''"];
var arr = /^([a-zA-Z]{2,3})('+|,+)$/gm.exec("baf,,,");
arr === ["baf,,,", "baf", ",,,"];
Of course, save yourself some sanity, and save that RegEx as a var.
And as a warning, if you haven't dealt with RegEx like this:
If a match isn't found -- if you try to match foo','' by mixing marks, or you have 0-1 or 4+ letters, or 0 marks... ...then instead of getting an array back, you'll get null.
So you can do this:
var reg = /^([a-zA-Z]{2,3})('+|,+)$/gm,
string = "foobar'',,''",
result_array = reg.exec(string) || [string];
In this case, the result of the exec is null; by putting the || (or) there, we can return an array that has the original string in it, as index-0.
Why?
Because the result of a successful exec will have 3 slots; [*string*, *letters*, *marks*].
You might be tempted to just read the letters like result_array[1].
But if the match failed and result_array === null, then JavaScript will scream at you for trying null[1].
So returning the array at the end of a failed exec will allow you to get result_array[1] === undefined (ie: there was no match to the pattern, so there are no letters in index-1), rather than a JS error.

You could try something like that:
function splitString(string){
var match1 = null;
var match2 = null;
var stringArray = new Array();
match1 = string.indexOf(',');
match2 = string.indexOf('`');
if(match1 != 0){
stringArray = [string.slice(0,match1-1),string.slice(match1,string.length-1];
}
else if(match2 != 0){
stringArray = [string.slice(0,match2-1),string.slice(match2,string.length-1];
}
else{
stringArray = [string];
}
}

var str = "mi,,,,";
var idx = str.search(/\W/);
if(idx) {
var list = [str.slice(0, idx), str.slice(idx)]
}
You'll have the parts in list[0] and list[1].
P.S. There might be some better ways than this.

yourStr.match(/(\w{2,3})([,']*)/)

if (match = string.match(/^([a-z]{2,3})(,+?$|'+?$)/)) {
match = match.slice(1);
}

split string only on first instance of specified character

In my code I split a string based on _ and grab the second item in the array.
var element = $(this).attr('class');
var field = element.split('_')[1];
Takes good_luck and provides me with luck. Works great!
But, now I have a class that looks like good_luck_buddy. How do I get my javascript to ignore the second _ and give me luck_buddy?
I found this var field = element.split(new char [] {'_'}, 2); in a c# stackoverflow answer but it doesn't work. I tried it over at jsFiddle...

Use capturing parentheses:
'good_luck_buddy'.split(/_(.*)/s)
['good', 'luck_buddy', ''] // ignore the third element
They are defined as
If separator contains capturing parentheses, matched results are returned in the array.
So in this case we want to split at _.* (i.e. split separator being a sub string starting with _) but also let the result contain some part of our separator (i.e. everything after _).
In this example our separator (matching _(.*)) is _luck_buddy and the captured group (within the separator) is lucky_buddy. Without the capturing parenthesis the luck_buddy (matching .*) would've not been included in the result array as it is the case with simple split that separators are not included in the result.
We use the s regex flag to make . match on newline (\n) characters as well, otherwise it would only split to the first newline.

What do you need regular expressions and arrays for?
myString = myString.substring(myString.indexOf('_')+1)
var myString= "hello_there_how_are_you"
myString = myString.substring(myString.indexOf('_')+1)
console.log(myString)

I avoid RegExp at all costs. Here is another thing you can do:
"good_luck_buddy".split('_').slice(1).join('_')

With help of destructuring assignment it can be more readable:
let [first, ...rest] = "good_luck_buddy".split('_')
rest = rest.join('_')

A simple ES6 way to get both the first key and remaining parts in a string would be:
const [key, ...rest] = "good_luck_buddy".split('_')
const value = rest.join('_')
console.log(key, value) // good, luck_buddy

Nowadays String.prototype.split does indeed allow you to limit the number of splits.
str.split([separator[, limit]])
...
limit Optional
A non-negative integer limiting the number of splits. If provided, splits the string at each occurrence of the specified separator, but stops when limit entries have been placed in the array. Any leftover text is not included in the array at all.
The array may contain fewer entries than limit if the end of the string is reached before the limit is reached.
If limit is 0, no splitting is performed.
caveat
It might not work the way you expect. I was hoping it would just ignore the rest of the delimiters, but instead, when it reaches the limit, it splits the remaining string again, omitting the part after the split from the return results.
let str = 'A_B_C_D_E'
const limit_2 = str.split('_', 2)
limit_2
(2) ["A", "B"]
const limit_3 = str.split('_', 3)
limit_3
(3) ["A", "B", "C"]
I was hoping for:
let str = 'A_B_C_D_E'
const limit_2 = str.split('_', 2)
limit_2
(2) ["A", "B_C_D_E"]
const limit_3 = str.split('_', 3)
limit_3
(3) ["A", "B", "C_D_E"]

This solution worked for me
var str = "good_luck_buddy";
var index = str.indexOf('_');
var arr = [str.slice(0, index), str.slice(index + 1)];
//arr[0] = "good"
//arr[1] = "luck_buddy"
OR
var str = "good_luck_buddy";
var index = str.indexOf('_');
var [first, second] = [str.slice(0, index), str.slice(index + 1)];
//first = "good"
//second = "luck_buddy"

You can use the regular expression like:
var arr = element.split(/_(.*)/)
You can use the second parameter which specifies the limit of the split.
i.e:
var field = element.split('_', 1)[1];

Replace the first instance with a unique placeholder then split from there.
"good_luck_buddy".replace(/\_/,'&').split('&')
["good","luck_buddy"]
This is more useful when both sides of the split are needed.

I need the two parts of string, so, regex lookbehind help me with this.
const full_name = 'Maria do Bairro';
const [first_name, last_name] = full_name.split(/(?<=^[^ ]+) /);
console.log(first_name);
console.log(last_name);

Non-regex solution
I ran some benchmarks, and this solution won hugely:1
str.slice(str.indexOf(delim) + delim.length)
// as function
function gobbleStart(str, delim) {
return str.slice(str.indexOf(delim) + delim.length);
}
// as polyfill
String.prototype.gobbleStart = function(delim) {
return this.slice(this.indexOf(delim) + delim.length);
};
Performance comparison with other solutions
The only close contender was the same line of code, except using substr instead of slice.
Other solutions I tried involving split or RegExps took a big performance hit and were about 2 orders of magnitude slower. Using join on the results of split, of course, adds an additional performance penalty.
Why are they slower? Any time a new object or array has to be created, JS has to request a chunk of memory from the OS. This process is very slow.
Here are some general guidelines, in case you are chasing benchmarks:
New dynamic memory allocations for objects {} or arrays [] (like the one that split creates) will cost a lot in performance.
RegExp searches are more complicated and therefore slower than string searches.
If you already have an array, destructuring arrays is about as fast as explicitly indexing them, and looks awesome.
Removing beyond the first instance
Here's a solution that will slice up to and including the nth instance. It's not quite as fast, but on the OP's question, gobble(element, '_', 1) is still >2x faster than a RegExp or split solution and can do more:
/*
`gobble`, given a positive, non-zero `limit`, deletes
characters from the beginning of `haystack` until `needle` has
been encountered and deleted `limit` times or no more instances
of `needle` exist; then it returns what remains. If `limit` is
zero or negative, delete from the beginning only until `-(limit)`
occurrences or less of `needle` remain.
*/
function gobble(haystack, needle, limit = 0) {
let remain = limit;
if (limit <= 0) { // set remain to count of delim - num to leave
let i = 0;
while (i < haystack.length) {
const found = haystack.indexOf(needle, i);
if (found === -1) {
break;
}
remain++;
i = found + needle.length;
}
}
let i = 0;
while (remain > 0) {
const found = haystack.indexOf(needle, i);
if (found === -1) {
break;
}
remain--;
i = found + needle.length;
}
return haystack.slice(i);
}
With the above definition, gobble('path/to/file.txt', '/') would give the name of the file, and gobble('prefix_category_item', '_', 1) would remove the prefix like the first solution in this answer.
Tests were run in Chrome 70.0.3538.110 on macOSX 10.14.

Use the string replace() method with a regex:
var result = "good_luck_buddy".replace(/.*?_/, "");
console.log(result);
This regex matches 0 or more characters before the first _, and the _ itself. The match is then replaced by an empty string.

Javascript's String.split unfortunately has no way of limiting the actual number of splits. It has a second argument that specifies how many of the actual split items are returned, which isn't useful in your case. The solution would be to split the string, shift the first item off, then rejoin the remaining items::
var element = $(this).attr('class');
var parts = element.split('_');
parts.shift(); // removes the first item from the array
var field = parts.join('_');

Here's one RegExp that does the trick.
'good_luck_buddy' . split(/^.*?_/)[1]
First it forces the match to start from the
start with the '^'. Then it matches any number
of characters which are not '_', in other words
all characters before the first '_'.
The '?' means a minimal number of chars
that make the whole pattern match are
matched by the '.*?' because it is followed
by '_', which is then included in the match
as its last character.
Therefore this split() uses such a matching
part as its 'splitter' and removes it from
the results. So it removes everything
up till and including the first '_' and
gives you the rest as the 2nd element of
the result. The first element is "" representing
the part before the matched part. It is
"" because the match starts from the beginning.
There are other RegExps that work as
well like /_(.*)/ given by Chandu
in a previous answer.
The /^.*?_/ has the benefit that you
can understand what it does without
having to know about the special role
capturing groups play with replace().

if you are looking for a more modern way of doing this:
let raw = "good_luck_buddy"
raw.split("_")
.filter((part, index) => index !== 0)
.join("_")

Mark F's solution is awesome but it's not supported by old browsers. Kennebec's solution is awesome and supported by old browsers but doesn't support regex.
So, if you're looking for a solution that splits your string only once, that is supported by old browsers and supports regex, here's my solution:
String.prototype.splitOnce = function(regex)
{
var match = this.match(regex);
if(match)
{
var match_i = this.indexOf(match[0]);
return [this.substring(0, match_i),
this.substring(match_i + match[0].length)];
}
else
{ return [this, ""]; }
}
var str = "something/////another thing///again";
alert(str.splitOnce(/\/+/)[1]);

For beginner like me who are not used to Regular Expression, this workaround solution worked:
var field = "Good_Luck_Buddy";
var newString = field.slice( field.indexOf("_")+1 );
slice() method extracts a part of a string and returns a new string and indexOf() method returns the position of the first found occurrence of a specified value in a string.

This should be quite fast
function splitOnFirst (str, sep) {
const index = str.indexOf(sep);
return index < 0 ? [str] : [str.slice(0, index), str.slice(index + sep.length)];
}
console.log(splitOnFirst('good_luck', '_')[1])
console.log(splitOnFirst('good_luck_buddy', '_')[1])

This worked for me on Chrome + FF:
"foo=bar=beer".split(/^[^=]+=/)[1] // "bar=beer"
"foo==".split(/^[^=]+=/)[1] // "="
"foo=".split(/^[^=]+=/)[1] // ""
"foo".split(/^[^=]+=/)[1] // undefined
If you also need the key try this:
"foo=bar=beer".split(/^([^=]+)=/) // Array [ "", "foo", "bar=beer" ]
"foo==".split(/^([^=]+)=/) // [ "", "foo", "=" ]
"foo=".split(/^([^=]+)=/) // [ "", "foo", "" ]
"foo".split(/^([^=]+)=/) // [ "foo" ]
//[0] = ignored (holds the string when there's no =, empty otherwise)
//[1] = hold the key (if any)
//[2] = hold the value (if any)

a simple es6 one statement solution to get the first key and remaining parts
let raw = 'good_luck_buddy'
raw.split('_')
.reduce((p, c, i) => i === 0 ? [c] : [p[0], [...p.slice(1), c].join('_')], [])

You could also use non-greedy match, it's just a single, simple line:
a = "good_luck_buddy"
const [,g,b] = a.match(/(.*?)_(.*)/)
console.log(g,"and also",b)

Regex using javascript to return just numbers

If I have a string like "something12" or "something102", how would I use a regex in javascript to return just the number parts?

Regular expressions:
var numberPattern = /\d+/g;
'something102asdfkj1948948'.match( numberPattern )
This would return an Array with two elements inside, '102' and '1948948'. Operate as you wish. If it doesn't match any it will return null.
To concatenate them:
'something102asdfkj1948948'.match( numberPattern ).join('')
Assuming you're not dealing with complex decimals, this should suffice I suppose.

You could also strip all the non-digit characters (\D or [^0-9]):
let word_With_Numbers = 'abc123c def4567hij89'
let word_Without_Numbers = word_With_Numbers.replace(/\D/g, '');
console.log(word_Without_Numbers)

For number with decimal fraction and minus sign, I use this snippet:
const NUMERIC_REGEXP = /[-]{0,1}[\d]*[.]{0,1}[\d]+/g;
const numbers = '2.2px 3.1px 4px -7.6px obj.key'.match(NUMERIC_REGEXP)
console.log(numbers); // ["2.2", "3.1", "4", "-7.6"]
Update: - 7/9/2018
Found a tool which allows you to edit regular expression visually: JavaScript Regular Expression Parser & Visualizer.
Update:
Here's another one with which you can even debugger regexp: Online regex tester and debugger.
Update:
Another one: RegExr.
Update:
Regexper and Regex Pal.

If you want only digits:
var value = '675-805-714';
var numberPattern = /\d+/g;
value = value.match( numberPattern ).join([]);
alert(value);
//Show: 675805714
Now you get the digits joined

I guess you want to get number(s) from the string. In which case, you can use the following:
// Returns an array of numbers located in the string
function get_numbers(input) {
return input.match(/[0-9]+/g);
}
var first_test = get_numbers('something102');
var second_test = get_numbers('something102or12');
var third_test = get_numbers('no numbers here!');
alert(first_test); // [102]
alert(second_test); // [102,12]
alert(third_test); // null

IMO the #3 answer at this time by Chen Dachao is the right way to go if you want to capture any kind of number, but the regular expression can be shortened from:
/[-]{0,1}[\d]*[\.]{0,1}[\d]+/g
to:
/-?\d*\.?\d+/g
For example, this code:
"lin-grad.ient(217deg,rgba(255, 0, 0, -0.8), rgba(-255,0,0,0) 70.71%)".match(/-?\d*\.?\d+/g)
generates this array:
["217","255","0","0","-0.8","-255","0","0","0","70.71"]
I've butchered an MDN linear gradient example so that it fully tests the regexp and doesn't need to scroll here. I think I've included all the possibilities in terms of negative numbers, decimals, unit suffixes like deg and %, inconsistent comma and space usage, and the extra dot/period and hyphen/dash characters within the text "lin-grad.ient". Please let me know if I'm missing something. The only thing I can see that it does not handle is a badly formed decimal number like "0..8".
If you really want an array of numbers, you can convert the entire array in the same line of code:
array = whatever.match(/-?\d*\.?\d+/g).map(Number);
My particular code, which is parsing CSS functions, doesn't need to worry about the non-numeric use of the dot/period character, so the regular expression can be even simpler:
/-?[\d\.]+/g

var result = input.match(/\d+/g).join([])

Using split and regex :
var str = "fooBar0123".split(/(\d+)/);
console.log(str[0]); // fooBar
console.log(str[1]); // 0123

The answers given don't actually match your question, which implied a trailing number. Also, remember that you're getting a string back; if you actually need a number, cast the result:
item=item.replace('^.*\D(\d*)$', '$1');
if (!/^\d+$/.test(item)) throw 'parse error: number not found';
item=Number(item);
If you're dealing with numeric item ids on a web page, your code could also usefully accept an Element, extracting the number from its id (or its first parent with an id); if you've an Event handy, you can likely get the Element from that, too.

As per #Syntle's answer, if you have only non numeric characters you'll get an Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'join' of null.
This will prevent errors if no matches are found and return an empty string:
('something'.match( /\d+/g )||[]).join('')

Here is the solution to convert the string to valid plain or decimal numbers using Regex:
//something123.777.321something to 123.777321
const str = 'something123.777.321something';
let initialValue = str.replace(/[^0-9.]+/, '');
//initialValue = '123.777.321';
//characterCount just count the characters in a given string
if (characterCount(intitialValue, '.') > 1) {
const splitedValue = intitialValue.split('.');
//splittedValue = ['123','777','321'];
intitialValue = splitedValue.shift() + '.' + splitedValue.join('');
//result i.e. initialValue = '123.777321'
}

If you want dot/comma separated numbers also, then:
\d*\.?\d*
or
[0-9]*\.?[0-9]*
You can use https://regex101.com/ to test your regexes.

Everything that other solutions have, but with a little validation
// value = '675-805-714'
const validateNumberInput = (value) => {
let numberPattern = /\d+/g
let numbers = value.match(numberPattern)
if (numbers === null) {
return 0
}
return parseInt(numbers.join([]))
}
// 675805714

One liner
I you do not care about decimal numbers and only need the digits, I think this one liner is rather elegant:
/**
* #param {String} str
* #returns {String} - All digits from the given `str`
*/
const getDigitsInString = (str) => str.replace(/[^\d]*/g, '');
console.log([
'?,!_:/42\`"^',
'A 0 B 1 C 2 D 3 E',
' 4 twenty 20 ',
'1413/12/11',
'16:20:42:01'
].map((str) => getDigitsInString(str)));
Simple explanation:
\d matches any digit from 0 to 9
[^n] matches anything that is not n
* matches 0 times or more the predecessor
( It is an attempt to match a whole block of non-digits all at once )
g at the end, indicates that the regex is global to the entire string and that we will not stop at the first occurrence but match every occurrence within it
Together those rules match anything but digits, which we replace by an empty strings. Thus, resulting in a string containing digits only.