How to split a string into an array based on every FOUR commas?

Question

so I'm trying to split a string into an array based on the amount of commas, how do I do that? Say my string is as such;

var string = "abc, def, ghi, jkl, mno, pqr, stu, vwx, yza";

How can i split it so that it returns;

var array = ["abc, def, ghi, jkl,", "mno, pqr, stu, vwx,", "yza"]

Is this even possible?

Right now I'm using var array = string.split(', ');

But this adds the strings into the array based on every single comma.

Any help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

I'd use .match instead of split - match (non commas, followed by a comma or the end of the string) 4 times:

var string = "abc, def, ghi, jkl, mno, pqr, stu, vwx, yza";
const result = string.match(/(?:[^,]+(?:,|$)){1,4}/g);
console.log(result);

• (?:[^,]+(?:,|$)){1,4} - Repeat, 1 to 4 times:
  • [^,]+ - Non comma characters
  • (?:,|$) - Either a comma, or the end of the string

If you want to make sure the first character is not whitespace, lookahead for \S (a non-whitespace character) at the beginning:

var string = "abc, def, ghi, jkl, mno, pqr, stu, vwx, yza";
const result = string.match(/(?=\S)(?:[^,]+(?:,|$)){1,4}/g);
console.log(result);