Javascript - divide by spaces unless within brackets

Question

I want to divide a string by spaces, but only if the spaces are not within square brackets. For example:

"What a [nice sunny] day"

After dividing, it should look like this:

[What, a, [nice sunny], day]

I tried to find the solution on my own, but I'm afraid I'm not enough familiar with RegExp in javascript.

`"What a [nice sunny] day".match(/(^|\s)(\[[^\]]+\]|\S+)/g)`. — Rob W, May 06 '12 at 10:53
Borrowing from @GGG, `var yourstring = yourstring.match(/(\[[^\]]*\]|[\S]+)/ig).join(', ');` — Nadh, May 06 '12 at 10:56
Thank you all for quick responses! All of them worked very well, but GGG's version did exactly what I wanted. How do I accept it as a correct answer? — undefined, May 06 '12 at 11:17
Leave a message in the format @GGG to notify him that there's a comment, and leave a message asking him to post his comment as an answer. — David Thomas, May 06 '12 at 11:26
@user1377881 mark Rob W's, he beat me by a few seconds on the first comment :) — Dagg Nabbit, May 06 '12 at 11:32
@GGG `[\S]+` is equivalent to `\S+`. Any reason that you used `[\S]` instead of `\S`? — Rob W, May 06 '12 at 11:36
@RobW nope, those are leftovers, I had some other stuff in there when I was playing with it in the console. I tried to edit it out but the comments wouldn't let me. =p — Dagg Nabbit, May 06 '12 at 11:40

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 06 '12 at 11:23

When the space has to be included, the following RegEx is needed:

"What a [nice sunny] day".match(/(^|\s)(\[[^\]]+\]|\S+)/g)
// Outputs: ["What"," a"," [nice sunny]"," day"]

In the comments, it became obvious that the spaces have to be removed:

"What a [nice sunny] day".match(/\[[^\]]+\]|\S+/g)
// Outputs: ["What","a","[nice sunny]","day"]

1 Answers1