Split a string based on multiple delimiters

Question

I was trying to split a string based on multiple delimiters by referring How split a string in jquery with multiple strings as separator

Since multiple delimiters I decided to follow

var separators = [' ', '+', '-', '(', ')', '*', '/', ':', '?']; var tokens = x.split(new RegExp(separators.join('|'), 'g'));​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 

But I'm getting error

Uncaught SyntaxError: Invalid regular expression: / |+|-|(|)|*|/|:|?/: Nothing to repeat  

How to solve it?

Answer 1

escape needed for regex related characters +,-,(,),*,?

var x = "adfds+fsdf-sdf";  var separators = [' ', '\\\+', '-', '\\\(', '\\\)', '\\*', '/', ':', '\\\?']; console.log(separators.join('|')); var tokens = x.split(new RegExp(separators.join('|'), 'g')); console.log(tokens); 

http://jsfiddle.net/cpdjZ/

Answer 2

This should work:

var separators = [' ', '+', '(', ')', '*', '\\/', ':', '?', '-']; var tokens = x.split(new RegExp('[' + separators.join('') + ']', 'g'));​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 

Generated regex will be using regex character class: /[ +()*\/:?-]/g

This way you don't need to escape anything.