Split string in between 2 delimiters and include them

Question

Giving the following string...

"Here is my very _special string_ with {different} types of _delimiters_ that might even {repeat a few times}."

... how to split it into an array using the 2 delimiters ("_", "{ and }") but also keeping the delimiters in each element of the array?

The goal is:

[
  "Here is my very ", 
  "_special string_", 
  " with ", 
  "{different}", 
  " types of ", 
  "_delimiters_", 
  "that might even ", 
  "{repeat a few times}", 
  "."
]

My best bet was:

let myText = "Here is my very _special string_ with {different} types of _delimiters_ that might even {repeat a few times}."

console.log(myText.split(/(?=_|{|})/g))

as you see, it fails to reproduce the desirable array.

Answer 1

You may use

s.split(/(_[^_]*_|{[^{}]*})/).filter(Boolean)

See the regex demo. The whole pattern is enclosed in a capturing group, so all matching substrings are included in the resulting array after String#split.

Regex details

• (_[^_]*_|{[^{}]*}) - Capturing group 1:
  • _[^_]*_ - _, 0 or more chars other than _ and then a _
  • | - or
  • {[^{}]*} - a {, then any 0 or more chars other than { and } and then a }

See JS demo:

var s = "Here is my very _special string_ with {different} types of _delimiters_ that might even {repeat a few times}.";
console.log(s.split(/(_[^_]*_|{[^{}]*})/).filter(Boolean));

Answer 2

You can use the following regex which returns some undefined values, finally, you can filter the undefined values.

let myText = "Here is my very _special string_ with {different} types of _delimiters_ that might even {repeat a few times}."

console.log(myText.split(/(_.+?_)|({.+?})/g).filter(Boolean))

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