Javascript regex - split string

Question

Struggling with a regex requirement. I need to split a string into an array wherever it finds a forward slash. But not if the forward slash is preceded by an escape.

Eg, if I have this string:

hello/world

I would like it to be split into an array like so:

arrayName[0] = hello
arrayName[1] = world

And if I have this string:

hello/wo\/rld

I would like it to be split into an array like so:

arrayName[0] = hello
arrayName[1] = wo/rld

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I wouldn't use split() for this job. It's much easier to match the path components themselves, rather than the delimiters. For example:

var subject = 'hello/wo\\/rld';
var regex = /(?:[^\/\\]+|\\.)+/g;
var matched = null;
while (matched = regex.exec(subject)) {
  print(matched[0]);
}

output:

hello
wo\/rld

test it at ideone.com

Answer 2

The following is a little long-winded but will work, and avoids the problem with IE's broken split implementation by not using a regular expression.

function splitPath(str) {
    var rawParts = str.split("/"), parts = [];
    for (var i = 0, len = rawParts.length, part; i < len; ++i) {
        part = "";
        while (rawParts[i].slice(-1) == "\\") {
            part += rawParts[i++].slice(0, -1) + "/";
        }
        parts.push(part + rawParts[i]);
    }
    return parts;
}

var str = "hello/world\\/foo/bar";
alert( splitPath(str).join(",") );