Javascript - Split a string based on a character but retain it in the resulting array

Question

Input

((Sass and Javascript) or (Python and Scala))

Delimiters -"(" and ")"

Output is an Array with the delimiters present as elements

["(","(","Sass and Javascript",")","or","(","Python and Scala",")",")"]

The problem that I am facing is this.

var arr = "((Sass and Javascript) or (Python and Scala))".split(/[(|)]/);
console.log(arr);
document.getElementById("output").innerHTML = arr;

<div id="output"></div>

When I use split on the string, I am losing the "(" and ")" characters and since they might occur anywhere in the string, I will need to insert them into the Array manually. Is there a better way to do this in JS?

Answer 1

You can use regex

/[()]|[^()]*/g

Regex Demo and Explanation

1. [()]: Matches ( or ) exactly once
2. |: OR
3. [^()]: Negated class, exclude ( and )
4. *: Match zero or more of the preceding class
5. g: Global match

Demo

var str = '((Sass and Javascript) or (Python and Scala))';
var matches = str.match(/[()]|[^()]*/g) || [];
matches.pop(); // Remove the last empty match from array

console.log(matches);
document.write('<pre>' + JSON.stringify(matches, 0, 2) + '</pre>');

Answer 2

Just simple

var string = '((Sass and Javascript) or (Python and Scala))';
var result = str.match(/[()]|[^()]*/g);

console.log(result)